V 



WAY OF THE CROSS , 




A Grotto of ihe Agonj. I Palace of Pilate. 

B ?Iac* v/here Jesrus^was taken. J Palace of Herod. 
C BrrJg-e over the Cedron KArca.de of {fee Ecce-Homo. 



v/he re Jesus Ckrist fell. 
I) Stercjuifr'an Gate. 
E House of Ann. 
F House of CaifiRas. 

G Holy C enacle. 



L By-street where the 
Blessed Virg'in met her 
Divide Son. 
P Judiciary Gate. 
5* Church of the Holy - 



H Chapel of tht Flagellation. Sepulchre. 



LAST JOUKNEY 



AND 



MEMORIALS OF THE REDEEMER; 

OR, 

VIA CRUCIS 



AS IT IS IN JERUSALEM. 



WITH TOPOGRAPHICAL, ARCHAEOLOGICAL, HISTORICAL, TRADI- 
TIONAL, AND SCRIPTURAL NOTES. 

By Kev. J. J. BEGEL, 

» / 

Pilgrim to the Holy Places. 



WITH NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS. 



NEW YORK : 

THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY CO., 
9 Barclay Street. 

1880. 



Empnmatur* 



Episcopal Residence, 
Cleveland, Ohio, Feb. 10, 1880. 

T hereby most willingly give the necessary " Imprimatur " for the 
publication of this new "Via Crocis," prepared and now published by 
Rev. J. J. Begel, a priest of the Diocese of Cleveland. The work will 
be found not only the pious memorial of a Journey to the Holy Land, 
but a most, edifying and instructive exposition and history of the Sacred 
Passion of our divine Lord, with interesting details of the present condi- 
tion and past history of all connected with the sufferings and death of 
the Saviour. 

+ R. GrILMOUR, 

Bishoj) of Cleveland. 



imprimatur. 




Copyright, Rev. J. J. BEGEL, 1880. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

INTRODUCTION, . . 5-8 

FIRST STATION :— Location of the Scene : the Pretorium— Scala Santa- 
Reflections— The Cross of Christ— The Crown of Thorns— The Title 
of the Cross— The Scourging—Church of the Scourging — Patibulary 

Column : its authenticity, ...... 9-14 

SECOND STATION :— A Point of the Law— Reflections— Moria and Cal- 
vary — Glory of the Cross, ...... 15-17 

THIRD STATION :— First Fall of Jesus— Reflections, . . . 18-19 

FOURTH STATION : Jesus meets His Blessed Mother— Topography— An- 
cient Memorial — Reflections, . ..... 20 

FIFTH STATION :— Topography— Simon of Cyrene— The Father of Alex- 
ander and of Ruf us— Reflections — Lazarus and Dives, . . 21-22 

SIXTH STATION:— A Woman wipes the Face of Jesus— Veronica— An- 
tiquity of St. Peter's Veronica — Tiberius Caesar and Berenice — 

Reflections and Prayer, ....... 23-26 

SEVENTH STATION :— Jesus faUs the Second Time— Judiciary Gate— Sen- 
tence of Christ— Reflections, ...... 27-29 

EIGHTH STATION :— Holy Women following Jesus ; He consoles them— 
Woes to come— Christians careful in all times to perpetuate the 

Knowledge of the Holy Stations, ..... 30-31 

NINTH STATION :— Jesus falls the Third Time— Stations within the 

Church of the Holy Sepulchre— Decline of Fanaticism, . . 32-33 



TENTH STATION :— Jesus stripped of His Garments— Topography of Cal- 
vary — Multiplied Proofs of its Authenticity — Vestments of the 
Saviour — Robe of Treves— Tunic of Argenteuil — Cincture, . . 34-43 



4 



Contents. 



PAGE 

ELEVENTH STATION :— Jesus is nailed to the Cross— Myrrhatum vinum 
— Going to Sacrifice— Praying for His Torturers — The Place of Cruci- 
fixion—Reflections, ....... 44-45 

TWELFTH STATION :— Topographical Notes— His Face towards Rome 
and the Nations— Insulting Him — A Conversion — Paradise promised 
—Maria Mater — Darkness predicted and mentioned in History — 
Dereliction — The Reed — Consummatum est — Death — Veil rent — 
Trembling of the Earth — Petrae Scissae — Descendit ad infernos — 
Other Prodigies — The Centurion — Absorpta Mors — Crurifragium 
and opened Side, ....... 46-71 

THIRTEENTH STATION :— The Sacred Body of Jesus is taken down from 
the Cross— Joseph of Arimathea — Nicodemus — Mary at the Obse- 
quies of Jesus— The Stone of Unction— Relics preserved by Joseph 
and Nicodemus — The holy Shrouds — Turin, Besancon, etc. — The 
holy Nails — The Bit of Carpentras — The Iron Crown — The Nail of 
Treves and Toul, . 72-92 

FOURTEENTH STATION :— St. Joseph of Arimathea, Sculptor— Attempted 
Desecration by Hadrian — Joyful Discovery by St. Helena — The Vir- 
ginal Tomb — Authenticity of our Lord's Tomb— Reflections, . 98-98 

CONCLUSION : — Chateaubriand and Lamartine's inexpressible Emotions — 
Future of the Holy Sepulchre — Vain attempts at Destruction — 
Sepulcrum Ejus erit gloriosum, ..... 99-102 



INTRODUCTION. 



The events of the Passion and the places where they occurred are, for the 
most part, evangelical facts. A few of these facts are gathered from tradition, 
but from a tradition resting on the highest probability, on the most certain data 
of historical archaeology, on the memories and recognition of the primitive 
Christians. The great publicity given to the judgment and death of Jesus : 
Pilate convoking at his pretorium the chief priests, the magistrates, and the 
people (Luke xxiii. 13) ; the lively and universal interest attaching to Jesus and 
His last actions, for He was the object of the unbridled hatred of some and the 
profound adoration of others, and was known by all for His miracles ; the time 
when He suffered, the eve of the great feast which yearly drew to Jerusalem the 
scattered Jews from all parts of the world — all these circumstances conjoin to 
bring out in bold relief the details of the suffering life of Jesus. Many of these 
details, even the most minute, are faithfully narrated to us by the Evangelists. 
Others, transmitted by a faitjiful tradition, remain engraved on the memory of 
Christians. None can be lost or forgotten amidst the brutal haste of His enemies 
and executioners, or the confusion and excitement of the multitude, for we know 
that love is stronger than hate. The holy women and a large number of sympa- 
thizers followed closely in the footsteps of Jesus, who deigned to console them : 
" Sequebatur autem Ilium multa turba populi, et mulierum, quse plangebant et 
lamentabantur Eum" (Luke xxiii. 27). And their pious attention and devout 
sentiments will become the inheritance in all future ages of every Christian heart 
where they may be revived. 

If you were told, for example, that a poor slave who was in no way related to 
you, and who scarcely knew you, had just exposed his life to save yours; that he 
joyfully offered his breast to the sword to save your life, and cheerfully fell under 
some mortal stroke with which you were threatened, with what tenderness, even 
though this poor slave were the least of men, would you not love him ! With 
what gratitude would you not thank him, and with what deep and tender affec- 
tion would you not keep him in everlasting remembrance ! But if you were told 
that this generous friend who had saved your life was the most beautiful, the 
most perfect of the children of men; that from his noble and majestic brow 
beamed forth the most ravishing splendor and goodness ; that from his lips were 
distilled sweetness and mercy; that he was in the world not for the loss of any, 
but for the salvation of all ; that he had come not to make any sad but to render 
all happy, to wipe the sweat from the brow of the weary and to dry the tears of 
the sorrowful — Venite ad me omnes qui laboratis ; that he had gone through the 
world shedding benefits on all — pertransit benejiciendo ; if you were told that he 
was but a man, though incomparably amiable— totus desiderabilis — would you not 
immediately feel your heart deeply moved? "Where," you would ask, "is this 
generous, this amiable liberator ? Where, at least, is his tomb, that I may kiss 
its dust and water it with my tears ? " 



6 



Introduction. 



Now, He who died to save the eternal life of Christians is more : He who 
redeemed them is their GOD. Thus has it been understood, and will ever be 
understood by all generations of the elect, who will be saved only by gratitude 
and love. Hence we need not be surprised to hear that Mary was the first who 
performed, and thus inaugurated, the holy devotion of the Way of the Cross; 
that after the Ascension of Our Saviour she who loved Him incomparably more 
than it is possible for any other creature — that is to say, as her Redeemer and 
her Son — made it her consolation, during her sojourn at Jerusalem, to visit fre- 
quently the holy places consecrated by the sufferings of Jesus, and to meditate 
on His infinite love for man. This is affirmed by Pope Leo X. in a bull given in 
1519: "Beata Virgo loca Passionis continuo visitavit" — The Blessed Virgin 
visited continually the places of the Passion. 

Such, also, is the uniform tradition of the Church of Jerusalem, as Father 
Boniface de Roguse, guardian of the Holy Sepulchre, gathered from the lips of 
the faithful in that city about the middle of the sixteenth century. And we can 
believe without difficulty the tradition of that city, which, since it was there that 
the Saviour shed His blood and the Holy Ghost descended on the Apostles, has 
never known its episcopate to fail even for one moment, and has always counted, 
even in times the most tempestuous, numerous and fervent assemblies of Chris- 
tian-. Where could be repeated with more confidence than there these words of 
Moses : tl Interroga majores tuos, et dicent tibi"? 

Can we reasonably doubt that, from the beginning of those thrice-renewed per- 
secutions in which the faithful from day to day were harvested by martyrdom, many 
had anticipated or followed the example of the holy bishop, Alexander, who, in 
the second century, quitted his flock to visit the holy places which Jesus had 
consecrated by His blood ? We think not; and we shall see later on, in a hostile 
determination of the Emperor Adrian in a.d. 137, an incontestable proof of it. 
Though three hundred years of persecution could not lessen devotion for the holy 
places, it is not to be doubted that these devotions were performed with timid cir- 
cumspection, and that pilgrims visited the holy places stealthily and in disguise. 

But when God, after three centuries of persecution, sent peace to His Church, 
and gave to the veneration of her children the sacred cross on which His Son 
had redeemed them, it was then that the holy practice of the Way of the Cross 
became more than ever the devotion of Christians; it was then that, from all 
parts of the world, immense crowds of pilgrims flocked to Jerusalem to venerate 
the footsteps of Jesus Christ on His ascent to Calvary. It was beautiful to see 
with what sentiments of love and compunction they advanced, often on their 
knees, through the streets of Jerusalem, where Jesus Christ had passed burdened 
with His cross. It was beautiful to see with what respect, mingled with ten- 
derness, they ascended the Mount of Calvary, kissing the spot on which the 
cross of Jesus had been fixed; and with what reverence they visited the tomb 
where His body had been deposited after His death. Oh! what sighs of love 
did not these pious pilgrims at that moment breathe forth to Heaven. What 
ardent th inka did they not render to Jesus Christ for the boundless charity which 
made Him die on the cross for their salvation ! With what an effusion of tears 
did they not implore of Him pardon for the sins which caused His death ! And 
when they had thus fully satisfied their devotion they reluctantly tore themselves 
away from these blessed scenes, bade a last adieu to the Holy City, and returned 
to their far-distant homes replenished with graces and benedictions, and resolved 



Practice of the Way of the Cross. 



7 



more than ever to love their Saviour with all their strength, and to die rather 
than by sin ever to lose His friendship. 

This generous impulse which brought the Christians in crowds to the holy 
places increased in so great a degree that St. Jerome says that they would not 
rest satisfied with their devotion, or deem themselves deserving of the name of 
Christians, unless they had visited, or at least had the good will to visit on the 
first opportunity, the holy Stations consecrated by the sufferings of Jesus Christ. 
Socrates tells us that up to his time the custom of all the saints, and particularly 
of apostolic men, had been to undertake the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, to 
perform the holy Stations, and there to clothe themselves with the new man, who 
is Jesus Christ. 

How, with their petty and ridiculous observations on this holy devotion, do 
Protestants wish that we should consider them, if not as the misguided advocates* 
of indifference, ingratitude, and contempt? They have no place among the spec- 
tators of Calvary; they represent nothing there — neither the indomitable hatred 
of the enemies of Christ nor the faithful attachment of His followers. By far dif- 
ferent traits has the true heiress, the legitimate spouse, been known in all times. 

But my reader may ask, Are the poor, who have neither time nor means to go 
to those places — the poor, the special friends of Our Saviour, of whom He has 
said, "Theirs is the kingdom of heaven" — to be deprived of this consolation and 
of these spiritual benefits ? No ; they know that there is a Calvary wherever 
there is a Catholic altar. Their inability to go to the Holy Land will be happily 
offset by their meditations and their love ; and the Church, dispenser of the 
pardon and of the virtue of the blood of Jesus, will favor them with the plenitude 
of the benedictions of her celestial Spouse, who has said, "Blessed are they who 
have not seen and have believed." Hear what Blessed Albert the Great, master 
of St. Thomas, says of the remembrance of the Passion in his treatise on the . 
Mass: " The simple remembrance of, or the simple meditation on, the Passion of 
Jesus Christ is more meritorious than to fast every Friday for a whole year on 
bread and water, to take the discipline unto blood every week, or to recite daily 
the one hundred and fifty psalms of the Psalter." 

Thus the Church enables us to find in our own country what the pilgrims to 
Jerusalem have gone and still go so far to seek ; and by a pilgrimage so short and 
easy as is that of the Way of the Cross we can, without inconvenience, enjoy all 
the fruits and advantages that are enjoyed by those pilgrims after the fatigues of 
a long and painful journey. 

Formerly, and even as late as the middle of the last century, the devotional 
stations of the Way of the Cross at Jerusalem were more numerous than at pre- 
sent. They commeaced at the Cenacle, whence Judas went out to deliver up his 
Master, and included the Agony at Gethsemani and all the stations which com- 
pose the actual Way of Captivity. They afterwards included the greater number 
of those which compose our present Way of the Cross, and terminated at the top 
of the Mount of Olives, the site of the Ascension of our Lord. The ancient Way 
of the Cross, then, was much more complete than that in present use. It was also 
more Scriptural. Of the eighteen stations, it contained only four that were 
founded on tradition ; all the others were named in Scripture. In the new Way 
six of the fourteen stations which compose it are traditional and the other eight 
Scriptural. It is this latter that forms the subject of the present work. 

Let us note that in pious practices of this character the Church only requires 



8 



Introduction. 



that they contain nothing contrary to faith and sound Christian morals. On this 
condition these practices are allowed ; if their effect is to augment faith and 
piety they are favored. It is, then, freely permitted in this class of meditations 
to represent to ourselves all sorts of circumstances, especially when they are, or 
seem to be, in harmony with the inspired recitals, and are calculated to fix the 
imagination and touch the heart. St. Bonaventure, who in his Life of Christ, so 
highly appreciated by pious and humble souls, has so largely availed himself of 
this liberty, says, in speaking of the holy infancy of Jesus : " Do not disdain to 
make on our Lord considerations humble, and even childish ; for all these things 
give us devotion, augment our love, enkindle our fervor, excite in us compassion, 
confer on us purity and simplicity, nourish and strengthen humility, elevate our 
hopes, and maintain a conformity of our will with God's and a holy intimacy 
between Him and the soul." 

By what I have said I do not mean in any way to weaken the traditions 
attached to the divers stations, for we know that these traditions were founded 
on remembrances of the Church of Jerusalem, and that they existed at the 
time of the Crusades as they exist to-day. Indeed, many authors assure us 
that all these stations were formerly marked by sanctuaries or oratories. This 
opinion seems to me probable enough, both because of the ruins that remain 
and because of what is recorded of those monuments. 

Perhaps the reader may ask, " What good am I to expect from this treatise, 
since so many books have been already written on the same subject?" If 
Heaven be pleased to shed its blessings on this little work it will, I trust, be 
profitable to many souls. It will strengthen the faith of those who read it, and 
will, I hope, give them a better knowledge of many of the details of our 
Saviour's Passion, and thus enable them to realize with more precision, interest, 
and benefit to their souls the accounts which have been left us by the holy 
Evangelists. If it happen to fall into the hands of painters or sculptors, it will 
aid them in making representations — both of the drama of Calvary and of all 
the stations which lead to it — much more in harmony with the verity of the 
places, the times, and the facts. The essential aim, however, does not lie in 
this, but in the conviction of the mind. In the happy times gone by in the 
ages of faith a writer might quietly content himself with meditations on these 
great mysteries; but in these ages of infidelity and scepticism, engendered by 
ignorance in religious matters as much as by the corruption of pride and 
passion, another task devolves upon the author — that of rebuilding, stone upon 
stone, the edifice of divine revelation. Every author should strive, as best he 
can, to prove what he advances; this I have endeavored to do so far as my poor 
ability and the narrow limits of this work will permit. If I have not dwelt on 
the proofs of the discovery of the true Cross and the other subsequent facts con- 
nected with it, it is because these facts are already familiar to the faithful, who 
read full accounts of them in the Lives of the Saints at the dates of the festivals 
instituted by the Church to honor the Cross; and if on certain other points I 
have not insisted as much as some readers may desire, it is that I might not pre- 
sent as certain things which may be doubtful— it being my duty to give on these 
points only the documents relating to them, leaving the reader to judge for 
himself. 




Z1ZYPHUS SPINA CHRIS? TI. 




FIRST STATION. 



LOCATION" OF THE SCENE. 

The palace of Pilate, his pretorium, and the garrison of the Roman troops 
are situated on Mount Acra, northeast of and overlooking the Temple of Jeru- 
salem. Any one who has seen Jerusalem, or who has even read the historian 
Josephus, cannot have the least doubt regarding the identity of the places ; for, 
owing to the conformation of the land, they present to-day to the eye of the 
traveller the same appearance as they presented in former ages. Ruined and 
reconstructed so many times, these buildings, after eighteen centuries, are still 
used for their ancient purposes. They still serve as a garrison for the Turkish 
troops under the command of a pasha, w T ho is governor of Jerusalem, and who 
has there his palace and court of justice. The entrance-gate of this famous pre- 
torium has preserved nothing of Roman majesty but the name; but the pilgrim 
can still recognize in the midst of these ruins the council-hall — properly called 
pretorium — and the court where Jesus, delivered into the hands of the vile popu- 
lace, was crowned, despised, mocked, and outraged.* Not far from there, at the 
northwestern extremity of the ancient buildings of the pretorium, may be seen 
the arch of the Ecce Homo, upon which Pilate presented Jesus to the people. 
This arch remains in its integrity. It was discovered some years ago while 
digging the foundation of the monastery of the Nuns of Sion. It rises behind 
the altar of their chapel, and is its most precious and incomparable ornament. 

As regards the marble steps which lead to the Pretorium properly called, and 
which were twenty-eight in number, they are now at Rome in a chapel erected 
in front of the Lateran Basilica near the Latin Gate. This chapel is called the 
Scala Santa from the name of the relic it contains, and for the reception of which 
it was built. These stairs were first placed in the basilica founded by St. 
Helena under the name of Holy Cross at Jerusalem, as also many other relics 
which with the Scala Santa she sent to Rome. With these relics she freighted 
three ships. When the Pope visits the Scala Santa he ascends it on his knees, 
as do also all the faithful who come in crowds to venerate it. It is in the keep- 
ing of the Passionist fathers, and is protected by a covering of wood, which, 
when it becomes worn out, is replaced by another. In this covering apertures 
covered with glass have been made, in order to expose some spots stained with 
the blood of Jesus Christ, which have disappeared under the kisses of the faith- 
ful rather than by the destructive agency of time. Three times our Saviour 

* At the place of the crowning with Thorns the Crusaders built an elegant little chapel! the exact 
design of which we have here reproduced from the original of M. de Vogue. The last time I per- 
formed the Way of the Cross at Jerusalem I had the advantage of making the First Station, not at the 
part of the street corresponding to it, hut in the court itself ; and I could see perfectly the interior of 
the above-mentioned chapel through a crevice in the door and a large hole in the lock. 

As to the holy crown, it was given by the Church of Jerusalem to the imperial Church of Constan- 
tinople. It was afterwards given to St. Louis, who for its reception caused to be erected at Paris that 
incomparable jewel of architecture called the " Holy Chapel. 11 



10 



First Station. 



ascended and descended these stairs : the -first time when He was about to 
undergo an unjust examination; the second, when returning from the palace of 
Pilate, where He had been mocked and derided ; and the third, after the bloody 
torment of the flagellation. 

Narrative and Reflections. 

Finally, after having inflicted on the divine Victim so many humiliations and 
torments, the cowardly governor, who at first appeared determined to protect 
Him, basely yielded Him up. He heard the cry of the multitude, which first 
troubled him and then cast him into dejection: "If you release Him you are 
not the friend of Caesar." Trembling, like all ambitious men, at the thought of 
being denounced to Coesar and of losing his favor, Pilate delivered to the fury 
of the wicked Him whose innocence he perfectly understood, Him of whose 
divinity eves he had had a glimpse. A slave brought him water, and he 
washed his hands publicly, saying: "I am innocent of the blood of this just 
man." Wash thy hands, O Pilate ! — thou wilt never wash thy conscience nor thy 
memory; for from this moment henceforth all generations shall repeat : Re, the 
Just, the infinite Sanctity, was crucified under Pontius Pilate! How many Pilates 
there are in the world ! Ca3sar first of all, God next. What do all servants and 
officers of unjust monarchs, of perverse emperors effect, if not to perpetuate for 
ever this detestable type ? But why blame others when we ourselves are guilty ? 
Every time we prefer a human interest to the voice of our conscience or to the 
holy will of God, what are we if not miserable Pilates ? We imitate even the 
conduct of the Jews, possessed as they were by hatred and rage ; like them we 
say: "We will not have Him to reign over us." Release to us not Him but 
Barabbas; we want not Him, nor His promises, nor His benefits, nor His threats, 
but robbery, adultery, injustice, and the liberty of our passions. " Non nunc 
sed Barabbam ! " 

Barabbas signifies son of the father. Was this name given him as a reproach 
for some deformity inherited from his father ? Be this as it may, it contains for 
us a beautiful reflection. In the blood of Jesus the criminal is washed ; he be- 
comes the son of the Father who reigns in heaven. 

" In presence of the ruins of this palace," says Father De Geramb, " and on the 
spot where the Man of Sorrows received with entire resignation His sentence of 
death, it seems to me that I still hear the deicidal cries uttered nineteen centu- 
ries ago, and that I still hear amid the clamors of death this horrible impreca- 
tion : 4 His blood be upon us and upon our children ! ' . . . Methinks that 
I perceive them written in letters of blood upon the very stones which surround 
me." 

At the last words of Pilate a fiendish delight circulates through the hearts of 
the Jews; the cross is prepared ; the crown of thorns is plaited ; the title of the 
cross is«engraved ; all the instruments of torture are made ready ; and during all 
this barbarous preparation Jesus, the meek Lamb, suffers in silence. 

HISTORICAL AND ABCIUEOLOG1CAL NOTES. 

The Cross. — It is an ancient tradition that the tree from which the wood of 
the cross was hewed was cut down in the northwestern suburbs of Jerusalem, 
and an antiquated monastery built there bears the name of Monastery of the Holy 




ARCH OF PILiATE . 




$ CALA SANTA. 



FRAGMENT OF THE CROWN, HOLY CHAPEL. OTHER. PART, AT 
natural SIZE. PAEIS . PARIS. CHABLIS, FROM. PARIS. 




Historical and Arcliceological Notes. 



11 



Cross. Beneath an altar is venerated the precise spot on which the tree had 
grown. "We visited this place on our way to Ain-Karim. 

After the Passion and death of Jesus His cross, with those of the two thieves 
who died at His side, was thrown into a deep valley on the other side of the 
rocks of Golgotha called the Vale of the Dead. There, under the projecting 
rocks, which may be still seen, it remained until its discovery by St. Helena. 

The faithful are acquainted with the historical circumstances of that discov- 
ery and the miracles which accompanied it. The cross was kept and venerated 
as the most precious treasure in the world in the basilica of Calvary founded by 
Constantine the Great. The names of all the holy priests successively appointed 
by the patriarchs of Jerusalem to the office of Guardians of the True Cross 
during many centuries, from the epoch of its discovery till the invasion of the 
Persians, and from the restoration of the Holy Cross by Heraclius till the inva- 
sion of the Saracens, are known, and we should have no difficulty in reconstruct- 
ing the integral list of their names in the exact order of succession. 

The faithful flock hither from all parts of the world to venerate this sacred 
relic, upon which flowed the blood of Jesus for the redemption of man. The 
most considerable portions of this relic are now at Rome ; the rest have been 
divided among the principal churches of the world. From an early date these 
pious divisions have been made, as we learn from the celebrated patriarch of 
Jerusalem, St. Cyril, who, about twenty-five years after its discovery, was wont 
to say that in one moment the universe was filled with particles of the true cross, 
and that nevertheless it seemed to be still entire at Jerusalem. The expression 
is, of course, to be understood in the sense that the particles given were very 
small. 

In his excellent work, entitled Instruments of the Passion of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, M. Ronault de Fleury, former pupil of the Polytechnic School, after 
having written to all the churches of the world possessing any portions of the 
holy cross, found that they only amounted to about one-third of the bulk of the 
whole cross. The authenticity of these relics is unquestionable, many of them 
being even of historic notoriety. We may thus judge of the absurdity of the 
objections made by Protestants and infidels who pretend, because of their num- 
ber, that they are supposititious relics.* How many portions, then, must have 
been lost ! I have the happiness of possessing two very small yet very visible 
particles, from an incontestable and historical source, unknown to the above- 
named learned author. 

The Crown of Thorns. — The kind of thorns used to form the Holy Crown 
was for a long time a subject of dispute. Some maintained that it was made of 
sea-rush ; and, indeed, it appears that this plant is found in the neighborhood of 
Jerusalem. Others supposed that it was composed of the branches of the ram- 
nus, otherwise zizyphus, or 82)ina Christi. It is easy to conceive how these dis- 
putes could arise in times which were not, as in our days, epochs of general 
examination and comparison. It seems — and this is the opinion of the learned 
Ronault de Fleury, who, in his researches, has spared neither expense, corre- 

* Before the unbelievers of our time had sought to turn into ridicule these holy relics former heretics 
had given them signal examples. Calvin, for instance, says that three hundred men could not carry 
now what was once carried by one man alone, and Luther assures us that a house could be built with 
the particles of the true Cross. How many millions have since believed, on the mere word of these 
rebels against the Church, that this is true ! 



12 



First Station. 



spondence, nor travel — certain that it was composed of ordinary rush, formed by 
the soldiers into a circle the more easily to fix the thorns in it. These thorns were 
from the branches of the Spina Christi. This opinion is the result of the closest 
examination of almost all the relics that have been preserved, in fragments more 
or less small, in a considerable number of sanctuaries, although we sometimes 
rind small fragments of rush venerated in some churches. The zizyphus, which 
the Arabs call ndbka, is common in the East and is found in the country around 
Jerusalem. On the banks of the Jordan especially this shrub is very common. 
I have even found there some beautiful crowns of thorns, woven, no doubt, by 
pious pilgrims, who had either forgotten them or were unable to carry them 
away. A plant better suited for this purpose could not be found, its branches 
being supple and pliant and armed with sharp thorns; the leaves are of a dark 
green, resembling those of the ivy. Perhaps the enemies of Jesus Christ, in 
order to add insult to pain, made choice of a plant similar to that with which 
victorious emperors and generals of armies were anciently crowned. 

With respect to the shape of the Holy Crown, it appears certain, according 
to Pere Durandus, who made it a special study, and according to Benedict XIV. 
and the learned French author whom we have quoted, that it was not a simple 
band encircling the forehead and temples, but a kind of cap (pilevs) covering the 
whole cranium. We know by the testimony of Origen and other authorities 
that Jesus wore it on the cross; consequently it was secured by Joseph of Arima- 
thea, who carefully guarded it, or rather it was deposited in the sepulchre by 
him. In fact, we find in the Talmud, in a treatise on u Sanhedrim," a formal law 
which required that all the instruments used for the punishment of one crucified 
should be buried with him. However that may be, it is certain that it was 
venerated in the earliest times of the Church. 

The Title of the Cross. — John Rivius, a learned Protestant author (1500- 
1o-j3) newly separated from the Church, makes a very just and ingenious remark. 
"As Caiphas, 1 ' said he, "predicted — or rather, as St. John says, prophesied — that 
it was expedient that one man should die for the salvation of all, in like man- 
ner it was by a particular providence of God that Pilate dictated the title of the 
cross in which it is signified that Jesus of Nazareth was the King of the Jews. 
Both, although without perceiving it, acted under the divine direction; for God 
employs for the glory of His name whatsoever He pleases, even the very works 
of the impious" (Dupin, Biblioth. heretique, vol. ii. p. 431). 

Equally offended and humiliated, the chief priests returned to Pilate and 
said : "Do not write King of the Jews, but that He said, I am the King of the Jews " 
(John xix. 21). Vain were their solicitations ; Pilate replied to them : " What I 
have written I have written." We know, indeed, that under the Roman laws 
none of the decisions of the judges could be changed even by those who had 
given them, no matter what their rank or dignity. This was the principle which 
inspired Pilate's decisive response. However, we may reasonably suppose that he 
was not slow to resent deeply the affront he had received from the Jews by 
their obstinate resistance to the attempts he had made to deliver Jesus. 

The true heiress, the legitimate spouse of Christ, possesses this souvenir of 
her Beloved, and has venerated it throughout all ages since she received it from 
the hands of the illustrious Helena. It is now, as it has always been, at Rome 
in the Church of the Holy Cross. I have in my albums an exact representation of 
it which a priest of that church graciously presented to me during my sojourn in 



Historical and Arcliceological Notes. 



13 



Borne. I reproduce it here for the satisfaction of my readers, as also a restora- 
tion of the relic, the title of the cross given by M. Renault de Fleury. Those 
who desire the proofs of the antiquity and authenticity of this precious monu- 
ment can find them in the beautiful work of this author. 

The Place op the Flagellation, and the Law with regard to this Kini> 
of Punishment as preliminary to Crucifixion. — The chief Roman magistrates 
were always preceded by lictors bearing the fasces — that is, a bundle of poplar, 
willow, or vine rods about a yard in length and surmounted by an axe. These 
fasces indicated two kinds of suffering which in capital punishments were in- 
flicted on criminals — namely, flagellation and death. 

The lictors were chosen from among the servants of the magistrates, their 
number corresponding to the degree of the administrative dignity of the latter. 
This point was regulated by the law. Their functions were, 1st, to march be- 
fore the magistrates, to keep back the crowd and to open a passage (they 
marched not in ranks or confusedly but in single file) ; 2d, to scourge the crimi- 
nals: "I. lictor, adde plagas reo, et in eum legi age" — Go, lictor, scourge the 
culprit, and on him execute the law. Such was the formula of the sentence, such 
the signal for scourging. 

Those who are familiar with history, or w.ho have even read the acts of the 
first martyrs, know how well the arsenal of the ancients, and especially of the 
Romans, was provided with instruments of torture for this kind of preliminary 
punishment, not only for the guilty but too often for the innocent. We hear of 
the rods, the lash, the whip, the scourge, the club, the scorpion, loaded gene- 
rally with lead at the extremity. 

The severity which characterized the Romans may be observed everywhere,, 
in their legislation as in their manners. Among the Romans — a people too much 
admired — the number of lashes in the flagellation was not determined by law* 
It was left to the arbitration of the magistrate, and too frequently to the cruel 
caprice of the executioners. Hence one of their greatest jurisconsults, Ulpian, 
complained bitterly that many culprits not condemned to death perished by the 
flagellation {De Pcenis, 1. viii.) 

Among the Jews the number of strokes was limited by the Lord Himself, and 
could not exceed forty. St. Paul was five times subjected to this punishment at 
the hands of the Jews : " A Judseis quinquies, quadragenas, una minus, accepi " 
(2 Cor. xi. 24). But for our Saviour it was different. Condemned, not by the 
Jews, who had lost the right of inflicting death, but by Pilate, the depositary of 
the sovereign power of the Romans, He was scourged according to the* Roman 
law — that is to say, He received an indeterminate number of lashes. 

Flagellation took place either before conducting the criminal to the place of 
execution or on the way thither — u aut ante deductionem, aut in ipsa deduc- 
tions " In the first case it was inflicted in the prison or in the pretorium — that 
is, in the hall where the criminal was judged — according as either place con- 
tained a patibulary pillar to which the criminal could be bound. 

The practice of scourging before departure was the more ancient, but, in the 
time of our Saviour, less common, as is shown in several examples among the 
Romans. For one reason or another — perhaps because the cross or its title was 
not completed — the ancient usage was put in practice in the case of our Lord. 

Church of the Flagellation. — The spot on which our Saviour was 
scourged was formerly a dependency of the buildings of the pretorium, and was- 



14 



First Station. 



situated at their eastern extremity. The clay after my arrival in Jerusalem I had 
the happiness of saying Mass at the Altar of the Flagellation, which is erected in 
the very place where the pillar to which Jesus was bound for His scourging was 
fixed. The office is that of the Precious Blood. Under this altar five silver 
lamps burn night and day. Everything here is calculated to impress the soul 
with a salutary sadness: the imposing gravity of the religious, the edifying de- 
portment and recollection of the faithful who hear Mass there, the memories 
which spring spontaneously to the mind in a place which was the preliminary 
scene of the dolors of the Man-God. You contemplate our Saviour stripped of 
His garments and bound to the pillar; you hear the dismal sound of the lash; 
you see the divine flesh of Jesus torn and bruised, His divine blood gushing 
from His wounds ; you are reminded of the prophecy of Isaias, verified with a 
terrible exactitude, and you exclaim with that holy prophet : "There is no beauty 
in Him, nor comeliness: and we have seen Him, and there was no sightliness, that 
we should be desirous of Him : despised and the most abject of men, a man of 
soirows and acquainted with infirmity; and His look was as it were hidden and 
despised, whereupon we esteemed Him not." And again you see Jesus* in the 
midst of atrocious sufferings, of bloody affronts, of revolting injustice, accom- 
plish this other oracle of the same prophet : "He shall be led like a sheep to the 
slaughter, and shall be dumb as a lamb before its shearer, and He shall not open 
His mouth." 

Pillar of the Flagellation. — During long ages the pillar to which the 
innocent victim was bound remained the object of the pious veneration of the 
faithful. This fact, notwithstanding the silence of the Evangelists, is sufficiently 
attested by the ancients (see Justus Lipsius) and by the veneration given to the 
holy pillar in every age. Prudentius speaks of it in these terms : 

" Vinctus in his Dominus stetit aedibus, atque columnm 
Adnexus tergum dedit, ut servile, flagellis." 

He adds that in his time it was still to be seen at Jerusalem, and that it sus- 
tained the church in which it was venerated : 

" Restat adhnc, templumque gerit, veneranda columna 11 ; 

or rather, as we learn more clearly from St. Jerome, it was the portico of the 
church that this pillar supported. He remarks that it was shown to St. Paula, 
and that there were still seen at that time some spots of the blood of our Saviour. 
This is what the Venerable Bede also testifies, adding that it was in the middle of 
the Church of Mount Sion. Adamnan, who venerated the holy pillar in his pil- 
grimage to the Holy Land, does not speak of these stains; but there can be no 
doubt that the\ were still visible at the time, since Raban Maur — who had him- 
self visited the holy place before being abbot of Fulda — says expressly that the 
traces of the blood of the Saviour were still to be seen. It is true that many 
of the expressions which he used in this place are borrowed from Bede on the 
same subject; but there is no reason to think that Raban simply reports here the 
testimony of that author, since he had certainly himself venerated the holy pillar 
in his journey to Jerusalem; and if he sometimes borrowed the expressions of 
the Venerable Bede, it was through respect for this doctor, whom he singularly 
osteemed and whom he endeavored to imitate, as Mabillon remarks. St. Gregory 



I 




PLACE OF THE «2»<I. STATION. 




Pillar of the Flagellation. 



15 



of Tours (sixth century) speaks also of the honor rendered in his time to the holy 
pillar : " It was the object of great veneration to some of the faithful, who, full 
of faith, "bound it with linen bands, which they afterwards preciously preserved, thus 
sanctified by this contact, and by the application of which they obtained the cure of 
various maladies" (Be Glor. Martyrum, c. vii.) 

The Canon Willebrand, who visited the holy places in 1211, reports that he 
saw there a portion of the holy pillar exposed to the veneration of the faithful. 

Since 1225 Eome has possessed the principal part of the holy relic. Cardinal 
John Colonna, whose courage and military talents had re-established under the 
dominion of the Roman Church many revolted provinces, went with the pon- 
tifical troops to make war against the infidels. After having taken Damietta and 
obtained some victories, he was made prisoner by Theodore Comnenus, who com- 
manded the troops of the emperor. He remained in irons for some time ; but the 
solicitude of Pope Honorius III., who had admitted him into the Sacred College, 
very soon delivered him, and the cardinal returned to Rome, bringing back with 
him only his precious relic. He placed it in the Church of St. Praxedes, whose 
title it bears, and where it is still exposed to the veneration of the faithful. It is 
of jasper or gray marble, and is one foot long and one foot and a half in diameter ; 
the ring to which criminals were fastened is still to be seen. It is only the upper 
part, however, that is at Rome ; the base, which is composed of fragments of col- 
umns, remains at Jerusalem. A portion is venerated in the chapel of the Francis- 
can fathers of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, between the altar and the door 
of the interior entrance which communicates with the rest of the basilica. It is 
kept under an iron lattice, and the faithful are admitted to see it only on Good 
Friday. Some persons may ask which of these two is the authentic one. "We 
must suppose that both are authentic. We might believe that the part which 'is 
called the Pillar of the Improperium formed a part of the base of that of the fla- 
gellation, if tradition were not opposed to this supposition. It assures us this 
base was the stone upon which the executioners of our Saviour made Him sit 
while they crowned Him with thorns, and mocked and derided Him. It is of 
gray marble, and is placed over the altar of the little chapel which belongs to 
the Greeks. It was formerly in the possession of the Abyssinians. 



SECOND STATION. 



' CHRIST BEARETH HIS CROSS. 

" And bearing His own cross, He went forth . . (John xix. 17). 

ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL REMARKS. 

We can here once more admire the precision of the evangelical accounts and 
their perfect harmony with profane history. It was the custom in ancient times 
for those condemned to this kind of punishment themselves to carry the cross on 
which they were to die. " Corpore quidem quisque malefactorum suam effert 
crucem," says Plutarch (De ser. Num. Ira). u Qui in cruce figendus, prius earn 
portaf (Artemidorus, Ornit.,\. ii. ch. xli.) 



10 



Second Station. 



From the first to the Second Station the distance is one hundred and eleven 
feet, upon rising ground which forms an acclivity of six and a half feet in a hun- 
dred, between the Church of the Flagellation on the right and the wall of the 
Santa Scala on the left. 

As there is nothing to indicate the precise place of the Second Station, some 
make it twenty paces, others sixty, from the First. The reason of the uncer- 
tainty is that the extent of the buildings of the pretorium and the court, and 
the exact place of the door opening thereto, are not yet established. The place 
generally agreed upon is a little before reaching the arcade of the Ecce Homo. 
And in this, I think, there can be no mistake, since it was on this spot that the 
Roman governor had his tribune, from which he used to address the people. 
Here must have been the door of the pretorium by which Jesus went out loaded 
with his cross to ascend Golgotha (John xix. 17). 

Reflections. 

"Thou hast read," says Tertullian to the heretic Marcion (iii.19), "in the 
Psalmist, 'The Lord has reigned from the height of the wood.' I await the ex- 
planation of this text. Wilt thou answer me that probably there is question 
here of some king of the Jews ending his days on a gibbet, and not of Christ who 
reigned by triumphing over death by the passion of the cross ? Since death had 
reigned from Adam to Jesus Christ, why may we not say that Christ has reigned by 
the wood, since in dying on the wood of the cross He has closed the gates of 
death ? 'A child is born to us; a son has been given us,' cries the prophet again 
in the same sense. But whom does the prophet mean, if not the Son of God, who 
"bears on His shoulders the sign of His domination? Speak, w 7 here is the monarch 
who bears on his shoulders the sign of his domination instead of a diadem on his 
head, of a sceptre in his hand, or of some distinctive mark in his vesture? But 
the new King of new ages has alone borne on His shoulders the power of a new 
glory and the proof of His greatness — that is to say, the cross — in order that, 
conforming to the preceding prophecy, He might reign by the wood." 

Transported with a fiendish joy, the Jews press around Jesus and load Him 
with the wood of His cross, thus fulfilling the prophecy of Jeremias in speaking 
of Him : 1 Come let us assemble; let us cast wood upon His bread' — that is to 
say, upon His body, which, as He Himself has claimed, is the celestial bread and 
the life of the world. It is thus Tertullian explains it. It is thus also that Cyril 
of Jerusalem explains it in speaking to the catechumens. "We know that the 
holy mysteries were concealed from them, especially that of the adorable Eucha- 
rist. "My dear hearers," he used to say to them, "if God will vouchsafe to 
initiate you to all these mysteries, you will know that bread, the food of man, 
was among the Evangelists the type of the body of Jesus Christ" (13 Catech.) 
And thus has it been explained by all the Fathers. 

His promises of infinite mercy have been repaid with torrents of mockeries 
and outrage. 11 He is the innocent Lamb, of whom Jeremias was the type (Jer. xi. 
19), that they led to the altar to be sacrificed, and that opened not His mouth to 
complain. Of what lamb does the prophet speak? John the Baptist tells us 
when he cries: 'Behold the Lamb of God, Him who taketh away the sins of 
the world' " (St. Cyril, 13 Catech.) 

In ascending to this Second Station our way led over the northern foot of 



Reflections. 



17 



Mount Moria, the summit of which was levelled by Solomon for the construction 
of the Temple, and on which tradition reports the sacrifice of Abraham to have 
taken place. In beholding Jesus loaded with the wood for His immolation, 
Jerusalem saw in reality what was only prefigured by Isaac bearing the wood for 
his sacrifice, and the ram entangled in the brambles which was immolated in his 
place. But as this Mount Moria is overtowered by Calvary, so are the figures 
of the Old Law surpassed by the reality of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. 

The pious soul here again considers with what sentiments of infinite mercy 
for us, and with what perfect submission to the will of His Heavenly Father, He 
received His cross, and with what generous dispositions He continued to carry it. 
Holy Cross ! precious Cross ! He had been expecting thee ; He had desired thee ; 
He had ardently sighed after thee; from the first moment of His life He had 
thee ever present to His mind through the whole course of His mortal career. 

For four thousand years the cross had been in the world an object of horror 
to all men ; it was set up as a mode of punishment only for the greatest and 
vilest criminals ; and those condemned to this kind of chastisement were doomed 
to the execration of their fellow-men. The very name of the cross was con- 
sidered a reproach not only by the whole pagan world of antiquity, but also by 
the Jews, who likewise held it in the utmost horror. " Cursed of God," said 
Moses, " be he who is fastened to the cross." 

But wait a little and see; see this cross, this object of universal opprobrium 
reserved for slaves, triumph over the contempt of man by the preaching of the 
apostles. It has now become the glory of the faithful, the strength and consola- 
tion of martyrs under the tortures of the amphitheatre. A young emperor (Con- 
stantine the Great) sees it in the heavens, the harbinger of peace after three 
hundred years of persecution, shining glorious as the midday sun, and he shows 
it to his army. Grace accompanies this sight and makes him a Christian. 
From this moment no man, how criminal soever he may be, shall ever die on the 
cross. It adorns the crown of the monarch, and is for women their most pre- 
cious jewel; it is associated with all the ceremonies of the Church; it crowns 
our altars and our tombs ; it is in the hands of the priest to inspire hope and 
consolation in the departing soul ; it is borne before the praying multitude to 
implore of the Father of all good gifts the fertility of the land ; it is in our 
houses — everywhere presenting itself under a simple or an elegant form ; now ol 
gold, now of wood ; now enriched with diamonds, now made of olive-kernels. 
Beside highways and on the brink of precipices, rudely constructed of pine 
branches, it indicates the unexpected death of some poor traveller, and asks of 
the passers-by a prayer for his departed soul. Here it is erected on the public 
cross-road; there on the borders of a cultivated field, surrounded by trees, under 
the shade of which the laborer comes to pray, to take his modest refection, and 
to repose at its feet. It receives the fervent and simple homage of the mother, 
the widow, and the child; it hears their sighs, it sees their sweat and their 
tears. 

Again, it is the great book from which the ablest preachers draw their elo- 
quence ; the unfailing spring of consolation for the weary and the sorrowful ; the 
beacon of hope to the poor, tempest-tossed mariner, who joyfully hails on a far 
distant shore this tree of salvation, this sign of redemption. In fine, it is by 
the cross that the world is illumined with a divine right, submitted to the faith 
by an infinite charity, and called to the participation of an eternal glory. 



18 



Third Station. 



What a change ! Behold, reflect! Tell me if this is not the change of the 
rigid hand of the Most High ? Can anything like this come from the works of the 
spirit of man ? 



THIRD STATION. 



JESUS FALLS THE FIRST TIME UNDER THE 
WEIGHT OF HIS CROSS. 

" We have seen Him . . . despised, and the most abject of men : a Man of sorrows and 
acquainted with infirmity " (Isaias liii. 2, 3). 

Passing under the arch of the Ecce Homo, the distance from the Second to the 
Third Station is about five hundred and fifty feet. The road slopes gradually, 
forming a declivity of from three to four feet in the hundred, and runs in an almost 
direct line to the intersecting point of the street coming from the Damascus 
Gate, formerly the Gate of Ephraim. At the end of the street, at the left angle, 
is to be found a large pillar of red marble, about eight or nine feet long, lying at 
the foot of the wall of a little chapel erected, according to some authors, by the 
pious zeal of the mother of Constantine. But its present style does not date 
beyond the first ogival period. It indicates the place where Jesus fell the first 
time under the weight of His cross. The three falls of Jesus are not mentioned 
in the Gospel; they are facts transmitted to us by tradition. The third Station 
is two hundred and sixty-seven paces from the arcade. 

Reflections and Picms Sentiments. 

How heavy must have been that cross! How great the weakness of Jesus, 
exhausted as He was from the loss of so much blood, shed during the flagellation, 
at Gethsemani, and, at the crowning with thorns ! The son of Abraham, ages 
before, carried the wood for his immolation by this same way. But we have 
seen, not the son of Abraham, but the Son of God, the infinite strength of the 
Father, totter and fall under a far different burden — under the weight of our 
iniquities, under the redoubled strokes of divine justice. Behold Him prostrate, 
annihilated, so to speak! 

He is " the Man of Sorrows, knowing infirmity,' 1 whom Isaias contemplates 
through distant ages, and whose sufferings and humiliations he describes with 
all the precision of an evangelist. 

He looks around for one to aid Him in carrying His burden, but he finds 
none — " Circumspexi, et non erat qui adjuvaret." His disciples have not shown 
themselves since He was made prisoner. In vain does He cry with His patriarchal 
type of sorrow : " Have pity on Me, at least you, My friends, for the hand of the 
Lord is heavy upon Me. . . It is thus "the Lord was pleased to bruise 
Him in His infirmity " (Isaias liii. 10). 

"We have seen Him — Him, the infinite glory of the Father, the splendor and 




ACTUAL PLACE OF THE STATION . 



Reflections and Pious Sentiments. 



19 



brightness of His being, the emanation and necessary splendor of His substance ; 
Him, the eternal Sun which illuminates the hierarchies of angels and the choirs 
of the elect ; and we have seen Him, without knowing Him, at the house of Herod 
and of Pilate. There we see the purple of disgrace hang from His sacred shoul- 
ders, a vile reed of derision wave in His divine hands. "We hear the cries and 
hisses of His enemies, which will accompany Him all along the way even to His 
crucifixion. He is no longer only contemned, but is clothed with contempt even 
as a garment. He has become contumely and abjection itself — " Ego sum oppro- 
brium hominum et abjectio plebis." Thus does He give back to us our right to 
glory by despoiling Himself of His own. 

We lime seen Him, the triumph, the happiness, the inebriation of the elect, 
the joy not only of the angels — "in quern angeli desiderant prospicere" — but 
of the Father Himself, who has said : " Hie est filius meus dilectus, in quo mihi 
bene complacui " ; and behold the dark veil of sadness has eclipsed this Sun of 
joy ; a sea of bitterness has overwhelmed this Fire which warms and animates all 
creation. Behold Him, not only the most abject of men, but the Man of all sor- 
rows ; or rather, He is no longer a man, but a worm writhing under the heel of 
him who crushes it — " Ego sum vermis, et non homo." Thus has He given back 
to us our hope of eternal delights by despoiling Himself of His own infinite 
happiness. 

And why all these mysteries, these manifestations the depths of which affright 
us? Why? Ah! can we ask it ? Why but for our sins? "And who," cries 
out David, " can understand sin ? " It is because He is made our pledge, because 
He has become our sacrifice, our victim, our holocaust ; it is because He has as- 
sumed to himself all the punishment reserved for sinners by infinite justice ; it is 
because He, infinite Sanctity, has become, as it were, sin itself ; it is because He 
is the Lamb of G-od, who bears on His shoulders the sins of the world. Observe 
— not the sins of one man, not of some men, but the sins of all, the sins of the world. 
He is, then, made an universal holocaust for all nations, as He is an eternal holo- 
caust for all ages. It is in this state of victim and of holocaust that, even in the 
bosom of glory, as we learn from St. John, He remains for ever before His 
Father in the midst of the eternal benedictions of His elect — " A lamb standing 
as it were slain." 

Now, every one knows what a holocaust is. It is what is destroyed ; what is, 
as far as possible, annihilated. It is what expires palpitating under the sacri- 
ficed knife ; what is consumed on the burning coals of the avenger's altar. It is, 
in a word, what is deprived, as far as can be, of a place or a being in creation. 
Oh ! how well has Jesus fulfilled this part which he voluntarily assumed. 

From the depths of eternity He, the infinite Wisdom, contemplated the whole 
extent of our loss, our incomprehensible loss, our sad shipwreck, our desolate ruin. 
It was God that we had lost — God and His heaven, His happiness, His glory, 
His eternity. From the highest heaven He measured the immensity of our debt ; 
His merciful hand poised the enormous weight of our iniquities, which, having 
torn and separated us from Him, was making us fall lower and lower, and like a 
weight of lead was dragging us down to hell. 

O Cherubim ! O Archangels ! O all you Hosts of Heaven ! with what promp- 
titude and joy, God willing it, would you not leave your home in heaven; with 
what willing obedience would you not abase yourselves and come down on 
our earth ; with what^ obedience, love, and pleasure would you not annihilate 



20 



Fourth Station. 



yourselves under the weight of our debt, aud be consumed before your God as in- 
cense upon burning coals. 

But stay, angels, stay in your ever-peaceful sanctuary of happiness and love. 
To recover our goods and our infinite riches, to pay and acquit us of our tremen- 
dous debt, in order that all justice might be accomplished — since justice must 
have its course and its infinite manifestation — your sacrifice would be unprofit- 
able ; your holocaust, the annihilation of all your hierarchies, would be insuffi- 
cient. The heavens would be deserted and the earth would profit nothing by 
the ruin. Stay, angels, stay ! 

It was necessary that nothing less than a God should be our holocaust. Do 
we understand these truths, germs of our greatness and of our felicity to come? 
O angels ot peace ! you understand them ; you, in bitter tears, follow invisibly 
all the footsteps of the Saviour — Angeli pads amare flehunt. 

O Jesus ! by Thy abasement, by Thy sorrows, by Thy tender mercies, visit our 
hearts and pierce them with true contrition ; give us also a profound humility at 
the sight of our weakness and fragility, and courage and confidence always to 
rise from our falls. 



FOURTH STATION. 



JESUS MEETS HIS BLESSED MOTHER, 

" Thy own soul a sword shall pierce " (Luke ii. 35). 

Proceeding a distance of about one hundred and thirty-five feet, over a 
gentle slope, we reach the Fourth Station, also situated on the left. An arcade 
designates the spot where the sorrowful meeting between Jesus and His Mother 
took place. The Blessed Virgin, after the sentence of condemnation had been 
pronounced at the palace of Pilate, not being able to force her way through the 
crowd, directed her steps by this route in order to reach by a shorter road the 
head of the mournful procession. It is believed that the Apostle St. John 
accompanied her during this sorrowful meeting — a moment so cruel for the Son 
and for the Mother. 

"The Evangelists," as Baron de Geramb judiciously remarks, "without 
speaking explicitly of this meeting, leave it understood in their recitals by show- 
ing us the Blessed Virgin on Calvary at the moment of the death of Jesus; and 
the tradition which has been preserved of this fact, strengthened by the testi- 
mony of many great saints, dates back to the remotest antiquity " (Peler. a Jervs., 
t. i. p. 323). 

"They showed me to the left," says Viscount de Chateaubriand, "the ruins 
of a church formerly consecrated to Our Lady of Sorrows, or La Madone du 
Spasme. It was here that Mary, at first repulsed by the guards, met her divine 
Son loaded with His cross. The fact is not recorded in the Gospel, but it is 
generally believed on the authority of St. Boniface and St. Anselm. St. Boniface 




ACTUAL KME OF THE 4 th. SJWIO.K • 



I 




ACJVAL PLACC OF THE btK SlXTIQM- 



Reflections. '21 

Says that the Virgin fell half dead, and that she could not utter a single word — 
' Nec verbum dicere potuit.' St. Ansel m assures us that Christ saluted her in 
these words: c Salve, Mater! 7 As we again find Mary at the foot of the cross, 
these accounts of the Fathers are not improbable. Faith is not opposed to these 
traditions; they show in what a marvellous and sublime degree the Passion is 
engraved on the memories of men. Eighteen centuries of continual persecutions, 
of incessant revolutions, and of ever-increasing destruction have not been able to 
efface or cover the traces of a Mother who came to weep over the dolors of an 
only Son" (Itin. de Jer., pp. 230, 231). 

Reflections. 

" We were advancing on the way of sorrows," says Baron de Geramb, u when 
the father who accompanied me ; stopping, said : ' It was here that Jesus met His 
Blessed Mother.' These words produced within me a profound sensation ; they 
will remain a long time in my soul. Indeed, who is there that would not feel his 
heart moved at the thought of this Mother, so holy, so tender, meeting her 
divine Son, who had already fallen under the weight of His burden, . . . 
surrounded by execution ers, disfigured with wounds and blows, and covered 
with spittle, with dust, and with blood ? . . 

" It was Jesus ! it was her Son! — He whom she had nourished with her milk, 
whom she had warmed on her bosom; He with whom she had fled into Egypt, 
whom she watched over in infancy, with whom she had partaken the bread of 
poverty, and whose absence of only a few days gave her so much anxiety and 
alarm. It was her Jesus, it was her Son, that she saw advancing to death, and 
to a death the most ignominious, the most cruel ! It was her Son whom she 
accompanied, and the traces of whose blood she watered with her tears " 
(St. Bonav., t. i. pp. 89, 90). 

It was then that the Blessed Mother of Jesus felt her heart pierced with the 
sword of sorrow which the holy prophet Simeon had predicted thirty-two years 
before — "Et tuam Ipsius animam pertransibit gladius." Neither was she igno- 
rant of the prophecy of Daniel on the violent death of the Messias ; and to all 
these sorrows she submitted when she replied to the angel : " Behold the hand- 
maid of the Lord ; be it done unto me according to thy word." 



FIFTH STATION. 



JESUS IS HELPED BY SIMON OF CYRENE TO 
CARRY HIS CROSS. 

"And as they led Him away, they laid hold of one Simon of Cyrene, coming from the country, 
and they laid the cross on him to carry after Jesus " (Luke xxiii. 20 ; Matt, xxvii. 32). 

TOPOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL NOTES. 

About one hundred and twenty-five feet from the Fourth Station a narrow, 
sloping street runs into that which is usually followed by the pilgrims. It is at 
the very foot of the hill ascending to Golgotha. The Jews feared that if they 



22 



Fifth Station. 



forced Jesus to proceed further with the cross on His shoulders He would expire 
at the next fall, and thereby deprive them of the horrible pleasure of seeing Him 
die upon the cross ; for they had already seen Him fall fainting and almost lifeless 
to the ground. If they had not been fully convinced of His extreme weakness, 
and alarmed lest He should escape the full measure of their cruelties, surely they 
would not, to assuage His sorrows, have done violence to an unoffending stran- 
ger by obliging him to carry the cross. Having quitted his labor in the fields, 
this man was returning to Jerusalem to prepare himself for the celebration of 
the great feast. He had just entered by the Gate of Ephrem, ignorant of all that 
was going on that day in Jerusalem. Standing leisurely in the corner of a street, 
he beholds with astonishment the terrible throng pass by. They lay hands on 
him and force him to perform an act not less ignominious than painful. Reluc- 
tantly, then, Simon — for such was the man's name — took upon himself the labor 
as well as the disgrace of the cross ; but soon, enlightened by divine grace, his 
heart is touched and he is changed ; willingly he helps Jesus, whose disciple and 
imitator he becomes. Thus the poor field-laborer merits our praise and venera- 
tion ; for as Christ is the guide and commander of all men, Simon may be con- 
sidered their standard-bearer. Thus has he become a type, and a great type, in 
the Church. 

Simon was called the Cyrenean because he was originally from Cyrene (mo- 
dem Barca), a city of Libya in Africa, where dwelt in the time of the Saviour a 
numerous colony of Jews. We are not able to infer from the words of the Evan- 
gelists whether this man helped Jesus by carrying only a part of the cross or by 
carrying it altogether. It is not without reason that St. Mark, the third of the 
Evangelists who speak of him ; mentions him as the father of Alexander and 
Rufus. His sons were honored and cherished in the first Christian assemblies. 
They formed for a time a part of the illustrious Church of Antioch, and St. Paul 
received hospitality from their mother during a sojourn of many years which he 
made in that city. At the end of his epistle this great apostle eulogizes Rufus 
as his "elect in the Lord. 1 " The Church of Avignon honors St. Rufus as its 
founder and first bishop. His relics were venerated there until their disappear- 
ance during the impious Revolution. As to Alexander, the best traditions inform 
US that, after having preached the Gospel in Spain, he went to Carthage, where, 
with many companions, he suffered martyrdom. All the martyrologies are unani- 
mous on this point. 

IfcefLectioiis. 

" In the second century the fanatics Basilides and Marcion promulgated the 
doctrine that Simon of Cyrene had carried the cross up to Mount Calvary, but 
that Jesus, whose body was unreal, or without substance, had withdrawn himself 
entirely from the eyes of the soldiers and the people ; and thus it happened that 
Simon was crucified instead of Christ. This invention of the Gnostics Moham- 
med also preached to his followers; but who among Christians will believe it? 
No one will openly avow it, but many show their faith in it by their lives, by the 
way in which they bear sufferings, and by their whole conduct. As often as pain 
and trouble oppress them, as often as the cross weighs heavily upon their shoul- 
ders, we hear them lament; and what is the cause of their grief? It is because 
they carry their cross alone and not with Christ. Simon of Cyrene alone must 
bear the burden, and this is beyoud all human strength. Who would not fall 



Simon the Cyrenean. 



23 



under it ? If Providence decree that they shall be fastened to the cross, that 
their affliction shall continue, or that they shall feel the depths of anguish, be 
the victim of incurable disease, and be brought into the presence of death, how 
then will the sufferer act ? 'Be of good cheer, O Christian ! thy Redeemer has 
been crucified, thy Saviour has died ; persevere upon the cross with Him, die with 
Him.' But no ; Simon of Cyrene alone was crucified, Simon of Cyrene alone 
died, not Jesus! Such is the real meaning of the lamentations of all impatient 
and easily-discouraged Christians ; it is as if they had embraced the heresy of 
Marcion. But the Lord ' hath borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows ' 
(Isaias liii. 4). How groundless, therefore, is the language of discontent, how 
devoid of the light of true faith ! 

"Let us imitate the conduct of Simon. Suddenly and unexpectedly the 
soldiers laid hold of this simple and good man, threw upon him the burden of 
the cross, and forced him to perform a task as laborious as it was disgraceful ; 
but this very work became to him a source of enlightenment and happiness. 
When surprised by unexpected calamities let us receive them with patience and 
self-command, and endure them with true resignation to the will of God, and 
very soon will we experience what unspeakable blessings are to be found in the 
cross of Jesus." 

Incidental Note. — Not far from the place of this memorable meeting we 
find the trace of another evangelico-traditional memorial, which we must not 
neglect even in the midst of the emotions of the way of Calvary. u I saw to the 
right," says Chateaubriand, " the place where the poor Lazarus lived, and at the 
opposite side of the street the house of the rich man. Certain it is that among 
the commentators, especially the modern, many have been pleased to consider the 
history of Lazarus and Dives as simply a parable ; but of a far higher authority 
are the Fathers of the Church, as St. John Chrysostom, St. Cyril, St. Ambrose, 
etc., more particularly those who lived so near to the times of the witnesses 
themselves, and who received the holy traditions, as it were, from secondhand — 
as St. Irenams, Tertullian, Origen, Clement of Alexandria. These have no doubt 
that the holy text is here but the narrative of a fact well known among the people. 
The tradition which has preserved till our day the memory even of the places 
concurs in confirming the truth of that ancient belief. Even the Jews have pre- 
served to posterity the name of the bad rich man ; they call him ' Nabal.' " 



SIXTH STATION. 



A WOMAN WIPES THE FACE OF JESUS. 

"Behold the splendor of Eternal Light, the spotless mirror of the majesty of God and the 
image of His goodness for man " (Wisdom vii. 26). 

While this sad procession was passing a woman came out from her house, 
and, in the midst of the'horrible concourse in which all human wickedness and 
crimes were set in play by the fury of hell itself, she beholds Jesus pale, dis- 



24 



Sixth Station. 



figured, and covered with blood. She cannot restrain herself at the sight ; no 
human force can stop her; fearlessly she advances towards Jesus and presents 
Him with a veil wherewith to wipe His adorable face. Jesus presses it to His face 
and, thanking her, returns it. This woman has been called Berenice. It was 
she, according to general belief, who had been cured of a flux of blood by simply 
touching the hem of His sacred garment. 

However extraordinary the action of this pious woman may appear, those 
who know the then existing custom among Jewish women of wearing a woollen, 
silk, or cotton veil on the neck or head will not be surprised at it, as we also 
know that it was customary to offer it to friends met in tears or who were other- 
wise suffering. This, then, is in fact the primary signification of the word shroud, 
which Bergier defines in his theological dictionary: " A veil or handkerchief to 
wipe the face." This woman, therefore, only conformed to the custom of her 
country, though she had to encounter the fury of the soldiers and the rough treat- 
ment of the mob; and by her charity and generosity she was worthy of winning 
a pledge of eternal love. Her action, so full of devotion, will be extolled in all 
ages; and pious souls will bless her unceasingly for the honor she rendered to 
Jesus in His painful agony. 

A low door at the left side of the street and a pillar of red granite lying 
almost at right angles with the entrance indicate the house of this holy woman ; 
u or, to speak more correctly, the place on which that house was built, for even 
the ruins of it have disappeared, and it is now the site of the habitation of a 
Greek family " (Geramb, t. i, p. 324). This is the Sixth Station, distant about 
one hundred and fourteen paces from the preceding ; between the two the road 
rises moderately. 

Entering her house and unfolding her veil this woman sees, with mingled 
feelings of wonder, joy, and tenderness, that Jesus in His infinite power had re- 
quited her compassion by imprinting upon this cloth the image of His divine face 
such as she had just seen it, pale and disfigured. What a precious memorial be- 
queathed to her by the Saviour ! From that moment she was no longer known 
among the faithful by her former name of Berenice, but by that of Veronica, a 
name composed of two words, the one Latin and the other Greek — vera, icon, 
true image. 

Kept during the first ages in the Catacombs, this miraculous image passed 
into the Constantinian basilica of the Vatican. It is now at St. Peter's in Rome, 
under the name of VoIP/ Santo. It is preserved with other relics in one (to the 
left) of the four pillars which sustain the dome of that basilica. " The relics, 
which are shown to the people on certain days," says Baron de Geramb, "are 
preserved in elegant niches above the statues, to which they ascend by steps 
hewed to the thickness of pilasters. Only the canons of St. Peter's can ascend to 
them ; so that whoever desires to see them must first be named titulary canon of 
that church, a favor which is accorded only to strangers of great distinction. In 
the year 1625 Urban VIII. gave this title to Ladislaus, who afterwards became 
king of Poland, and in 1700 Innocent XII. gave it to Cosmus III., Grand Duke of 
Tuscany. At an earlier period, in the year 1425, the Emperor Frederic III., 
being at Rome for his coronation, received from Nicholas V. permission to see, in 
the habit of canon, the veil of St. Veronica (Voy. a Rome). 

In a fragment of one of those numerous works of piety mentioned by St. 
Jerome (Catalog), which has been happily transmitted to us, St. Methodius, Bishop 



St. Veronica — The Sacred Veil. 



25 



of Tyre about the year 311, and soon afterwards a martyr, has preserved the in- 
teresting account of the translation of this relic to Rome. Here is the substance 
of his narrative : 

The fame of the miracles of our Saviour had reached the ears of Tiberius 
through public rumor and the official reports of Pilate. The emperor having 
fallen sick, desired to see this extraordinary personage who was living in Judea. 
'•If He be a god," said he, " He can cure me ; if He be a man, He can help me 
by His counsel." He called one of his officers, called Volusianus, aud sent him 
to Palestine with orders to bring Jesus to him. The officer embarked irnmedi- 
diately, but, having an adverse voyage, he arrived in Judea only after the death 
of our Lord. Not being able to accomplish his mission, he wished at least to 
bring back to the emperor some memorial of the Nazarene. He learned that a 
woman who was living in the city of Tyre had been cured by Jesus and that she 
possessed His portrait. Volusianus sent for her and obliged her to follow him 
with the likeness. On his return Volusianus presented this woman to Tiberius, 
on seeing whom the emperor asked her if it were true that she had been cured. 
u It is so," replied the woman, presenting the image of our Savicur to Tiberius, 
who was cured on the spot. Penetrated with gratitude, the emperor repaired to 
the Senate and proposed to place Jesus among the number of the gods. The 
senators refused, upon which the prince, giving way to his anger and resent- 
ment, put to death many of the members of this illustrious assembly. As to the 
woman of Tyre, she remained at Rome and bequeathed the image of the Saviour 
to Pope St. Clement, who carefully preserved it and transmitted it to his suc- 
cessors. 

Several observations may be made on this tradition : 1st. It says that Tiberius 
knew the miracles of our Saviour. This fact is also attested by Tertullian and 
St. Justin, who say in their Apologies that the acts of our Saviour, written by 
Pilate, were preserved at Rome in the archives of the Senate ; and we know 
moreover that the governors of the provinces used to send to the emperors ac- 
counts of all the extraordinary events that transpired under their administra- 
tions. A similar practice prevails even now in France, in England, and in many 
other countries. 2d. It contains no circumstance repugnant to reason, or which 
contradicts known facts. 3d. It affirms that Tiberius, irritated at the refusal of 
the Senate to have Jesus Christ admitted into the number of the gods, avenged 
himself upon that body by putting many of its members to death. This detail, 
so far from being contrary to history, in reality accords with it by giving the rea- 
son of a fact reported by Tacitus and Suetonius — that is, the vengeance exercised 
by Tiberius against the Senate. However this tradition may be regarded, one 
thing is certain, that the sacred veil has been honored at the Vatican from the 
remotest antiquity. As early as the eighth century a solemn feast was established 
in its honor. 

It will be said, however, that the sacred veil is honored in several churches, 
just as certain critics of our day are not afraid to assert that the body of the same 
martyr is honored in many places. We will briefly reply to these pretended 
difficulties: 1st. It imports but little what passes in other churches; it suffices 
to know that the soared mil is preserved at Rome, invested with the three prin- 
cipal proofs of authenticity — the antiquity of its testimonials, the priority of its 
veneration, and the judgment of competent authority. 2d. The simultaneous 
existence of several veils or kerchiefs, sanctified by the touch of the Saviour, is 



26 



Sixth Station. 



not impossible ; indeed, to those who are acquainted with the history of the first 
Christians it even seems probable. Many may have been called sawed veils be- 
cause they contained particles of the true one. Particles, or even dust or filings, 
from the true nails of the Passion are often enclosed in profane ones, and small 
portions of the true cross are frequently deposited in others of various materials. 
Now, in the language of Christians, these second nails are called sacred; and, 
although they have pierced neither the hands nor the feet of our Saviour, they 
are not the less objects of a just veneration. Many other answers could be 
given, but we have already passed the limits of a simple note. 

The Veronicas venerated in certain churches can only be fac-similes, with 
perhaps a fringe from the border of the original; or they may, perhaps, have 
simply touched it. I myself possess one of these latter fac-similes imprinted on 
linen, which was given me at Rome. Those who desire more ample details of 
this holy relic, its authenticity, the solemnities of which it has been the object 
in all Christian ages, etc., will find them fully set forth in the Bollandists' collec- 
tion, vol. iv. pp. 454, 463, and vol. xxvii. p. 87. 

On my return from Rome, having presented one of these Holy Faces to a pi mis 
lady, she observed immediately that the holy crown was not represented on it. 
Wish the opinion that I myself held at the time, that Jesus wore it from the 
Pretorium to Calvary, I did not know what to reply. Some days afterwards, in 
reading over the Bollandists, I believed I had found (vol. xxvii. p. 87) the answer 
to this difficulty, where I read that a veil had been offered to Jesus by St.- Martha 
also, who, in company with other holy women, was seeking Him at the moment 
He came out from the grotto of G-ethsemani, immediately after His agony, and 
before being betrayed, and that the same miracle as that performed in favor of 
Berenice was then wrought. But I have since, I think, found a better explanat ion 
in the text of the apocryphal gospel of Nicodemus : 

"And Jesus went out from the Pretorium, and the two thieves with Him. 
And when they had arrived at the place which is called Golgotha, the soldiers 
stripped Him of His garments and girded Him with a cloth, and they put on His 
head a crown of thorns, and they placed a reed in His hands. And they crucified 
also two thieves," etc. 

The words of this text plainly lead us to believe that the horrible farce of the 
Pretorium was re-enacted on Calvary ; that the reed and the crown, as well as the 
inscription for the cross, were borne at the head of the procession as trophies of 
chastisement and as a proof of accusation, and that consequently Jesus had not 
this crown on when Berenice met Him. To give more weight to our supposition 
let us add a word on the import of the apocryphal writings which we have just 
'(""ted. Tischendorf and Thilo, two of the most learned Protestants of our day, 
find nothing in this gospel indicating an origin posterior to the acts even of Pilate 
and a pseudo-gospel of St. James. There is no passage which may not have 
been written by one of the faithful living in the first ages of the Church. Nor 
can we dissent from this opinion. 

rtefLections and Prayer. 
With the angels who desire to contemplate it — "in quern angeli desiderunt 
prospicere" — and with the cherubim, those glorious spirits of light who before 
its splendor veil their faces with their wings, let us adore this divine face of the 
Saviour. Behold how it is changed, obscured ! Alas ! it is no longer to be 




} ace of the 7? Station. 



Topographical Notes — Judiciary Gate. 



27 



recognized under the dust of the highway and the filthy spittle of a yile mob ; 
or, rather, under the deformity of our crimes ! O heavens ! be seized with 
astonishment; and you, O gates of heaven ! in trembling and desolation be anni- 
hilated — " Obstufecite cceli et porta ejus desolamini vehementer. . . ." And 
yet, O sinless spirits! this fearful change is effected not for you — " nusquam an- 
gelos comprehendit " — but for me. 

O Jesus! the more Thy divine face, which the most clear-sighted of thy 
prophets can no longer recognize — "non est Ei facies neque decor '' — is hidden 
under the thick veil of grief and ignominy, the more art Thou worthy of my 
adoration, gratitude, and love. Grant me, O Lord ! that perfect contrition for 
my sins which will efface for ever from my soul the seal and image of the devil. 
May this poor soul, by the effect of Thy love and the constant remembrance of 
Thy sorrows, put on the perfect resemblance of its Saviour, a meek, humble, 
patient victim, and become the living image and faithful mirror of Thy virtues ; 
so that, Christian in reality, I may be another Christ — " Christianus alter 
Christus" (Tertull.) 



SEVENTH STATION. 



JESUS FALLS THE SECOND TIME. 

The steepness of the ascent continues to increase. After having passed over 
a distance of over one hundred and ninety feet we come to the Seventh Station, 
on our right. It is indicated by an incision made in a stone in the wall. Reach- 
ing this spot after a fatiguing ascent, Jesus falls a second time under the weight 
of His cross and misery, and under the burden of our crimes and frequent re- 
lapses into sin. But His mercies are unfailing, infinite. Let us thank Him for 
His past favors, and ask of Him firmness and constant fidelity in His love and 
service. 

TOPO GRAPHICAL NOTES. 

At the time that Jesus accomplished his sacrifice the city of Jerusalem did 
not extend farther than this Station. Calvary, now within the limits of the new 
city, was then outside the precincts of the ancient Jerusalem : " Christus extra 
portam passus est " — " Christ suffered outside the gate, 1 ' says St. Paul. This gate, 
which may be perceived, from the Station, a few steps higher up in the same 
street, was named, and is still named, the Judiciary Gate. 

A mere inspection of these ruins and their surroundings is sufficient to con- 
vince any candid person that there was anciently a gate here, which is now walled 
up to about half its height. This undeniable fact is one of those which serve to 
confound the false and extravagant notions of modern infidels, who vainly endea- 
vor to confuse the topography of ancient Jerusalem so as to efface all traces and 
memorials of our Saviour, and finally to reject the greatest of all, which is Gol- 



28 



Seventh Station. 



gotha. These ignorant and fanatical writers believed it expedient and worthy of 
them to adopt the policy of Hadrian, and the result, with the single exception 
that we have not had to wait so long for it, has been exactly the same. Here, 
however, we must do justice to many eminent Protestant writers, such as Schultz, 
Scholz, etc., who have described the topography of Jerusalem as it has been de- 
lineated by Chateaubriand, D'Anville, Michaux, etc. — as, in a word, it has been 
delineated in all times. 

This ancient gate was called the Judiciary Gate, less because criminals going 
to the place of execution had to pass through it, than because the sentences of 
condemnation were delivered there in early times. We know that, according to 
the usages of antiquity, the judges were wont to meet under one of the gates of 
the city to pronounce their sentences, and that the custom of posting them there 
existed until the time of Christ. They were placarded on a pillar which is still 
to be seen there standing entire, and half covered with a nopal bush, so as to per- 
petuate to the latest generations the remembrance of the greatest crime that had 
ever been perpetrated on earth. 

SENTENCE OF CHRIST. 

To this pillar, then, was affixed the sentence delivered by Pilate, where those 
who had not heard it at the Pretorium could take cognizance of it. Certain 
authors are even of opinion that it was there proclaimed anew, and that Jesus in 
passing heard for the second time the blasphemous words. The following is the 
tenor of it, according to the most ancient tradition we have on the subject : 

" Conduct to the place of punishment Jesus of Nazareth, who provokes the 
people to rebellion, who despises Cajsar, and who says falsely that He is the Mes- 
sias, as is proved by the testimony of the ancients of His nation, and, with sham 
insignia of royalty, crucify Him between the two thieves. Go, lictor, prepare the 
crosses.' 7 

Another formula, also very ancient, has been preserved to us from about the 
eighth century, I believe. It is as follows: 

%t Sentence pronounced by Pon tius Pilate, intendant of the Lower Province of Galilee, 
that Jesus of Nazareth shall suffer by the cross. 

" In the 17th year of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius, and on the 24th day 
of the month of March, in the most holy city of Jerusalem, duriug the pontifi- 
cate of Annas and Caiphas. 

" Pontius Pilate, the intendant of the Province of Lower Galilee, sitting in 
judgment in the presidential seat of the Prretor, sentences Jesus of Nazareth to 
death on a cross, between robbers, as the numerous and notorious testimonies of 
the people prove that — 

"1. Jesus is a misleader. 

" 2. He has excited the people to sedition. 

" 3. He is an enemy to the laws. 

" 4. He calls himself the Son of God. 

" 5. He calls himself falsely the King of Israel. 

" G. He went into the Temple followed by a multitude carrying palms in their 
hands. 

" Orders from the first centurion, Quintus Cornelius, to bring him to the place 
of execution. 

"Forbids all persons, rich or poor, to prevent the execution of Jesus. 



Sentence of Christ 



" The witnesses who have signed the execution are: 1. Daniel Robani, Phari- 
see ; 2. John Zorobabeli ; 3. Raphael Robani ; 4. Capet. 

" Jesus to be taken out of Jerusalem through the gate of Tournes." 

" This sentence is engraved on a plate of brass, in the Hebrew language, and 
on its sides are the following words : ' A similar plate has been sent to each tribe.' 
It was discovered in the year 1280 in the eity of Aquila, in the kingdom of Naples, 
during a search made for Roman antiquities, and remained there until it was 
found by the Commission of Arts in the French Army of Italy. Up to the time 
of the campaign in Southern Italy it was preserved in the sacristy of the Carthu- 
sians near Naples, where it was kept in a box of ebony. Since then the relic 
lias been kept in the chapel of Caserta. The Carthusians, in answer to their 
petitions, obtained the privilege of keeping the plate, which was an acknowledg- 
ment of the sacrifices which they had made for the French army. The French 
translation was made literally by members of the Commission of Arts. Denon 
had a fac-simile of the plate engraved, which was bought by Lord Howard, on 
the sale of his cabinet, for two thousand eight hundred and ninety francs." 

No critic, however inexperienced, can for a moment hesitate as to the com- 
parative worth of these two documents. The first, considered as a historico- 
archreological probability, is unimpeachable ; I will not pause to make observa- 
tions on the contradictions and improbabilities of the second. 

Reflections. 

It is, then, through this gate that Jesus goes forth from Jerusalem, never 
again to re-enter it. Fatal gate ! witness of the egress of so many criminals going 
to pay to human justice the debt of their various crimes, thou art witness also 
of the departure of the Holy, the Innocent, the Immaculate, the Eternal Son of 
the Most High! Adieu, Jerusalem ! Jesus is outside thy walls ! Thou hast 
banished thy Saviour, and He leaves thee to thy fate ! unhappy city ! who hast 
not known the day of thy visitation, Jesus abandons thee ; what will become of 
thee ? No more peace, no more glory for thee now ! Thou wilt exist only as a 
sign of complete desolation, as a type of the Christian who, wilfully blinded by 
passion or malice, betrays his Redeemer, and shamefully banishes Him from his 
heart, which he profanes. Very soon, and in every age, the pilgrim in sorrow will 
exclaim : Behold, alas ! this Jerusalem, formerly celebrated among all the cities 
of the earth for its splendor and magnificence; this Jerusalem, once the favored 
city of God upon whom all peoples lavished praises and encomiums : 11 Gloriosa 
dicta sunt de te, civitas Dei ! " — Glorious things are said of thee, city of God ! 
Whence come these ruins, these ashes and rubbish, sad memorials of her once 
glorious days ? From her cloaca: and ruins a sad voice answers: She refused to 
acknowledge her Chief and her God : she banished her Saviour and sent Him to 
the cross ! O Jesus ! grant that, purified from my crimes by Thy love and by 
the blood which Thou art about to shed for me, I may never more banish Thee 
from my heart, but that I may be always worthy of the visits of Thy grace. 



30 



Eighth Station. 



EIGHTH STATION. 



JESUS CONSOLES THE DAUGHTERS OF JERUSALEM. 

"And there followed Him a great multitude of people, and of women who bewailed and lamented 
Him. 1 '— Luke xxiii. 27. 

The ascent becomes still more steep as we approach the Eighth Station, the 
distance to which is one hundred and fifty feet. It is marked by a large pillar, of 
not very remarkable appearance, in front of a gateway which is walled up. It 
was here that occurred the circumstance which forms the subject of this Station. 

HOLT WOMEN. 

" And there followed Him," says the Evangelist, "a great multitude of peo- 
ple, and of women who bewailed and lamented Him." If we review in succes- 
sion the adversaries and persecutors who, alone or in troops, rose up against 
Christ, and at the same time reflect upon the well-established fact that the female 
sex greatly outnumbers that of the male, a singular observation presents itself to 
our minds. The most implacable of all the enemies of Christ were the high- 
priests and Pharisees, but in all their meetings and councils no woman was present, 
for among them women had no voice. The Herodians loaded Him with mock- 
ery and insult, and although it is very probable that the shameless Herodias and 
her equally wicked daughter were present in Jerusalem, yet no mention is made 
of them in the history of the Passion of our Lord. Jane, wife of Chusa, belonged 
at that time to the court of Herod, and the Gospels speak of her as one among 
the most faithful worshippers of Christ. Pilate acted against Him with revolt- 
ing injustice; but his wife, although a pagan, appeared as His protector and 
gave testimony to His innocence. 

The infuriated rabble raged in wild tumult, but that the women did not join 
in their outcries seems certain, since it is related that they followed the suffering 
Redeemer bewailing and lamenting Him. From among all the multitude con- 
nected with this great event, the only men faithful to Christ were the Apostle St. 
John; St. Peter, but only after his fall; the thief on the cross, and Joseph and 
Nicodcmus, after His death; while, on the contrary, among all the women who 
are named in the narrative not one is found who acted malignantly against Him. 
Claudia defended His innocence ; Magdalen, Mary Cleophas, Salome stood with 
His Mother near the cross, weeping and grieving with tender compassion, and 
Veronica or Berenice, together with the women of Jerusalem, followed Him. 

>l Behold," says Eutymius, "the order of things inverted. The disciples of 
the Lord have fled or are silent, but the women are firm and remain faithful to 
Him. in the days of the Old Testament the widow of Sarepta received the 
prophet Elias. hospitably, the Sunamite woman the prophet Elizeus; and as it 
was even then customary, and women deemed it an honorable duty, to devote 
their services to the teachers of the divine law, so also have women always 
manifested the sincerest love for Christ, and they have protected the evangelical 
truth with the most zealous care, not only during the life of their Saviour, but 
in all succeeding ages." 



Jesus Consoles the Daughters of Jerusalem. 



31 



Jesus hearing the lamentations of these daughters of Israel, turning to them 
said, with mingled grief and tenderness : 

" Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for Me, but for yourselves and for your 
children. 

" For behold the days shall come wherein they will say : Blessed are the 
barren, and the wombs that have not borne, and the paps that have not given 
suck. 

"Then shall they begin to say to the mountains: Fall upon us ; and to the 
hills : Cover us. 

" For if in the green wood they do these things, what shall be done in the 
dry ? " 

That is to say, if I who am just — as Pilate himself has declared before all 
the people — am overwhelmed with sufferings, what torments shall be reserved 
for the wicked? (By a proverbial manner of expression the Hebrews signified 
the just by green wood and the wicked by dead and unprofitable wood. We 
see some examples of this in the holy Scriptures, as in Ezech. xx. 47.) 

Any one who has read the Jewish historian Josephus knows with what ven- 
geance this awful prophecy of the Saviour was very soon fulfilled. And yet 
this was but the commencement of their woes, as He Himself said some days be- 
fore — "Initium hsec dolorum." Those frightful calamities which accompanied 
their national ruin were but the prelude to the dreadful anguish that awaits not 
only them but all unbelievers and workers of iniquity at the last day, when 
they shall see Him whom they pierced, and when the time of mercy shall have 
passed for ever, to give place to eternal justice. 

And why do not we ourselves weep as did these children of Israel when we 
meditate on the sufferings of Christ ? Because we are indifferent ; because we 
are ungrateful. " Weep not for Me," says Jesus to the lamenting daughters of 
Jerusalem, " but weep for yourselves and for your children weep not so much 
over Me as over those who do not weep for Me. " The just perisheth, and no 
man layeth it to heart 7 ' (Is. lvii. 1). The sweet Friend of souls, the Teacher of 
all wisdom, the Wonderful, who from infinite height came down mercifully to 
man, he suffers for all, suffers whatever human and diabolical malice can devise. 
His Passion, however, is our hope; His humiliation our exaltation; His death 
our life; and are there none who will devote a tear of love and gratitude to 
Him? u Why shall I not weep, why not lament," exclaims St. Francis the 
Seraph, " when I see that Love is not loved ? " 

It is especially on this way of dolors that, by the mouth of His prophet, 
Jesus says to us : u O vos omnes, qui transitis per viam, attendite, et videte, si est 
dolor sicut dolor meus." He thus spoke by His words, by His sufferings, and by 
His grace to the hearts of the daughters of Jerusalem ; and they wept. He 
speaks to us also by His grace and by faith ; all the wounds which cover His vir- 
ginal body are as so many mouths by which He cries out to us : "O all you 
who pass by the way, stop one moment and see if there be any sorrow like 
unto My sorrow! . . ." Why pass you on, O ungrateful people ! without cast- 
ing upon Me even one look of gratitude and love? Stop for one moment and 
consider ; and if there be any sorrow like unto My sorrow, and if there be any 
love like unto My love, I consent that you continue your way without any notice 
of Me; I consent that you profane and exhaust the noble faculties of your im- 
mortal souls in the effusions of vain friendships and perfidious loves; I consent 



32 



Ninth Station. 



that you shed all your tears on the tombs of your parents and friends, and that 
there remain none, not a single tear, for the sorrows of your Redeemer and 
your God. 

ARCHAEOLOGICAL NOTE. 

Before leaving this Station let us call attention to a fact connected with it. 
In the time of St. Bonaventure (1221-1274) "there were still to be seen in this 
place the ruins of a church which was there constructed," says he, "to preserve 
the remembrance of this fact; so have I learned from one of our brothers who 
saw them v ( Vit. Christ., ch. lxxvii.) 

Thus we see that before the time of the Grusades the Stations of the Way of 
the Gross were marked by oratories; after this epoch, when the infidels were mas- 
ters of the Holy City and its edifices, their fanaticism was unable to prevent the 
continuation of the pious memorials of the Christians of Jerusalem. All the Sta- 
tions were marked, in order to transmit to posterity every circumstance of the 
great drama of man's redemption. Some are indicated by ancient sanctuaries 
in ruins; some by columns lying on the spot; the others by marks which, to 
the infidel, are meaningless, but which, persuasively though silently, speak to 
the heart of the grateful Christian. Here we must not omit to mention a pecu- 
liar circumstance — i.e., that the Turks, a people at all times so fanatic, are quar- 
tered along almost the whole extent of the Way of Sorrows. 



NINTH STATION. 



JESUS FALLS THE THIRD TIME. 

Like the preceding, this Station is included in the buildings erected after the 
death of our Saviour, between the Judiciary Gate and Golgotha. These build- 
ings — commencing at the Eighth Station— no longer permit us to follow the steps 
of Jesus, who now, in open country, climbing the steep sides of Calvary, ap- 
proaches nearer and nearer the theatre of His last sufferings. Therefore, to go to 
the Ninth Station, we must return to the Seventh and take, at the left of the do- 
lorous way — now at our right — the street of a dark and narrow bazaar, which 
opens by a few steps covered by dust and rubbish. Having proceeded about one 
hundred yards, we ascend an old, roofless staircase — or rather the balustrade of a 
staircase, for there remains only the place of the steps — and after having made 
a few circuits in these filthy corners, under a dark porch, we arrive at the bottom 
of a little yard. Here the Ninth Station is located. It was at the very foot of 
Calvary that Jesus tell the third time. A pillar lying at the base of the wall i ti - 
dicates the place of this new agony. It is at the entrance of the Coptic Convent 
and close to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. 

Reflections and Prayer. 
Jesus will soon have reached the summit of Calvary. His enemies, trans- 
ported with joy and rage, press Him to hasten His steps, impatient to perpetrate 




Actual place of the StailotU 



Topographical Remarks. 



33 



their deicidal crime. And how is the rnind of Jesus occupied at this moment ? 
With the agonizing thought that for a great number of sinners, who obstinately 
harden their hearts to His grace, His sacrifice will be unprofitable. This thought 
plunges Him into a mortal sadness and afflicts Him more than all the torn) en ts 
He has still to endure; it casts His soul into so cruel a dejection that, as in His 
agony in the garden, His strength fails Him and He falls again with His face to 
the ground. 

O Jesus, Victim of love ! who art about to be immolated for the salvation of 
man, deign by Thy apparent weakness to strengthen our souls and to apply to 
us in time the merits of Thy sufferings, that we may be able to offer Thee the 
tribute of our praise for all eternity. 

Feeble souls, whose life is but a series of too often-repeated falls, but who, 
nevertheless, entirely cured of your weakness, will one day be eternally united to 
Him, here prostrate yourselves, and in acts of sorrow, of gratitude, and of love an- 
nihilate yourselves at His feet. 

"If those who read the Passion in the Gospel," says Chateaubriand, "are 
struck with a holy sadness and with profound admiration, what is it then to fol- 
low these scenes at the foot of Mount Sion, in view of the Temple, and under 
the very walls of Jerusalem ? " 

TOPOGRAPHICAL REMARKS. 

All the Stations that remain to be visited — namely, the place where Jesus was 
stripped of His garments and drenched with gall, where He was nailed to the 
cross, Golgotha, where He expired, and the tomb in which His body was laid — 
are included in various places in the vast basilica of which a part of the summit 
here appears to our eyes. 

That part of the Way of the Cross comprising the first nine Stations is about 
a mile in length. This is all that remains of the dolorous passage of the Saviour 
through Jerusalem. Lively faith could wish to find there traces more numerous 
and honored ; but the Holy City has for a long time been in the possession of in- 
fidels, and we should thank God that Moslem fanaticism permits us to traverse 
these precincts and to visit these places which the Redeemer has consecrated by 
His sufferings and His blood. 

Formerly — and not many years since — piety was far from being free to show it- 
self in the streets of Jerusalem ; it was obliged to concentrate itself in the sanctuary 
of the soul, deprived of all facilities for exterior manifestation. On a route lined 
almost exclusively by Turkish habitations, and much frequented, it was better 
that the pilgrims should limit themselves to interior prayer than to provoke the 
mockery and blasphemies of which pious but imprudent persons had sometimes 
to complain. 

But generally, especially since the Crimean War, when they saw France and 
England sustain their crumbling monarchy, the Turks at Jerusalem practise habits 
of tolerance which contrast singularly with their former fanaticism. During our 
sojourn in the Holy City we very often made, collectively or individually, the 
Way of the Cross, kneeling at each Station and praying aloud ; and — I say it 
with profound satisfaction — we were the objects neither of insult nor mockery, 
on the part of Jews or Turks. A good example for those liberals of Paris who 
complain that piety obstructs the passage through the streets ! 



34 



Tenth Station. 



TENTH STATION. 



JESUS IS STRIPPED OF HIS GARMENTS. 

'• The soldiers took Hie garments (and they made four parts, to every soldier a part) and also hi» 
coat. Now, the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout. "--John xix. 23. 

TOPOGRAPHY OF CALVARY. 

We give here some preliminary notes on the arcrnuological topography of 
Calvary, and especially the proofs — or at least a few of the proofs — which incon- 
testably demonstrate the authenticity of that place. 

" And they bring Him [Jesus J into the place called Golgotha, which being 
interpreted, is, The place of Calvary'' (Matt, xxvii. 33; Mark xv. 22; Luke 
xxiii. 33 ; John xix. 17). • 

It has pleased the Holy Ghost that the place where Jesus died for us should 
be mentioned by the four Evangelists, who all — with the single exception of St. 
Luke, who wrote more especially for the Gentiles — give it its two names : the 
Hebrew name, Golgotha, and the Latin-Greek, Calvary. This almost identical 
mention by the four Evangelists seems to indicate that this place was well 
known. In reality it was the place where condemned criminals were publicly put 
to death. And why should Jesus and the two robbers who accompanied Him 
be executed elsewhere ? 

u And in order that all the people might be able to assist, there was a large 
public place between the mount and the walls of the city. The rest of the mount 
was surrounded by gardens, one of which belonged to Joseph of Arimathea, a 
secret disciple of Jesus Christ, where he had made for himself that sepulchre in 
which the body of our Lord was laid. It was not the custom among the Jews 
to inter their corpses as we Christians do. Each one, according to his means, 
used to excavate in a rock a little cavern, where the body was placed extended 
on a table of stone ; the entrance was then closed up by a slab, whose ordinary 
height was only about four feet" (Chateaubriand, Itiner., p. 220). 

The Romans had fixed, for state criminals only, the places of execution on 
their forums; as to all other criminals, they were to die outside the cities or the 
camps. The state law was the same among the Jews, and it is to this that St. 
Paul makes allusion when he says : " Christ suffered outside the walls." In order 
to avoid the legal impurities produced by a corpse suspended on a gibbet and 
an object of malediction, Moses had ordained that executions should take place 
outside the camp : " Naboth hath blasphemed God and the king : wherefore they 
brought him forth without the city, and stoned him to death" (3 Kings xxi. 
13). Our readers will also recall the rocky precipice outside the walls of Naza- 
reth. This usage was a kind of excommunication precedent to the final 
punishment. 

However, to enter fully into the true tendency and spirit of the law, which is 
to impress a salutary terror by the sight of punishment, we may here remaik 
that among all nations the places of execution were always very near the cities. 
Hence, among the Romans the soldiers condemned to death were conducted out 
of the camp to undergo their punishment, as we clearly learn from A. Hirtius, 
Seneca, Vegetius, and others; thus, in the Crucial Soldier (act xi. sc. 4), Plautus 



Topography of Calvary. 



35 



says : " Credo ego, istoc extemplo tibi esse eurndern actutuni extra portam dis- 
pessis manibus, patibulum cum habebis." And Seneca (Gontrov. 1. i. ) : "Dicen- 
dum est in puellaui veheinenter, non sordide nec obsene, sordide Basilius, qui 
dixit: Extra portam istam virginem." According to Plutarch, the gates leading 
from the camp or from the city to the patibulary places were called infastes, or 
of ill omen. 

The higher and secret reason why Jesus was conducted outside the walls and 
there immolated consists, as we learn from St. Paul, in this : that He w T as the 
archetype of those victims whose blood flowed on the altar of the tabernacle, but 
whose bodies were to be burned outside the camp; and the conclusion that he 
draws from it is that of perfect detachment from the world. " Then," says he, 
" with Jesus let us go out from the camp " — that is to say, from relations and 

commerce with the world — " bearing the cross and opprobrium of Jesus " in 

order to have a share in his glory and triumph — " for we have here no lasting 
city, but we seek one that is to come." 

Hence arose in the first public ceremonials of the Church the ancient custom 
adopted by the faithful of meeting on Good Friday, not in their sanctuaries in 
the interior of the cities, but outside the walls in the cemeteries, and there hold- 
ing their sacred assemblies. U I have for a long time sought in my mind the 
reason," says St. Chrysostom in his sermons when speaking of this day, *< why our 
ancestors, abandoning the sanctuaries they possessed in the cities, were wont to 
meet on Good Friday outside the walls on this spot where we now stand, and 
consecrate by law this ancient custom; for I am persuaded that they have not 
acted rashly or without good reason. But I have discovered the cause, which is 
meet and just, conformable to right reason and in perfect harmony with the feast 
we celebrate. And what is this solemnity ? We celebrate to-day the remem- 
brance of the cross, and Christ Himself has led us outside the city; ' for the 
sheep,' says He, ' know and follow their Shepherd.' " 

In giving us the name of Golgotha, the Evangelists, St. Luke alone excepted, 
give its etymology. In the three languages it signifies head, or the place of the 
skull. 

In their explanations of the reasons of this etymology authors differ. Some 
think that the word Golgotha signifies height or round-headed, or the form of a lit- 
tle hill, and suppose that this rock has the form of a skull. Others believe that 
Golgotha received its name from the number of skulls to be found there, this 
mount having been a place for the public execution of criminals. 

Many of the Fathers aver that this name comes from the head of the first man, 
who is held by tradition to have been buried on that mountain; and they fur- 
ther remark that Jesus Christ desired to die there, in order to restore life to man 
in the same place where reposes the body of him by whose sin all mankind had 
been condemned to death. St. Ambrose (in Luc, 1. xxiii.), St. Jerome (in Eph., v. 
14, and Epist. ad Marcell.), Origen (in Mutt.), St. Epiphanius (Jfar., xlvi.), St. 
Basil (in Is.), St. Chrysostom (in J., horn, xiv.), and St. Augustine (JDe Cic. Dei, 
xvi. 32) express this belief. 

It is a common tradition in the Orient that the first man was interred on Cal- 
vary. The Syrians and the Arabs call this mountain Granion or Acranion, which 
also signifies head or chief, because it was believed that the chief or first of men 
was there interred. The Mohammedans have a book which contains a dialogue 
between Jesus Christ and the skull of Adam (D'Herbelot, Bibl. Orient, p. 278, 



36 



Tenth Station. 



" Cranion "). These proofs of the burial of Adam on Calvary are fully developed 
in the work of M. Gaume, entitled the History of the Good Thief, pp. 90-105. 

Iu all ages the most exact writers and travellers have always distinguished 
three points in this group of mountains, or rather this three-peaked mountain, 
on which Jerusalem is situated — "Fundamenta ejus in montibus Sanctis' 1 : the 
first, Sion, so-called because of its height; the second, Moria ; the third, Cal- 
vary. On Sion were the city and citadel of David ; on Moria the Temple of 
Solomon ; on Calvary the tomb of Adam and the sacrifice of Isaac. How su- 
premely solemn have the destinies of these holy mountains become since the 
sacrifice of Jesus ! Calvary has witnessed the accomplishment of the greatest 
mysteries of the divine mercy, the redemption of man; Sion, the institution of 
the Blessed Sacrament and the gift of the Spirit of God ; Moria, the seat of the 
abomination of desolation, will subsist as an eternal monument of the abrogation 
of the ancient sacrifices. 

Let us quote on this point a great bishop of the East, the illustrious master 
of the still more illustrious disciples, St. Chrysostom, St. Basil, St. Athanasius. 
" Calvary," says Diodorus of Tarsus, " forms part of Mount Moria. The latter is 
divided into several mounts and hills. On the western part was the peak called 
Sion, where was situated the citadel of David. Near this was the threshing- 
floor or field of Oman the Jebusite, bought by David, which became the site of 
the Temple of Solomon, as is recorded in the second book of Paralipomenon. 
Another part of Mount Moria, called Calvary, is outside the precincts of the city. 
It is there that Isaac was immolated, and the Christ whom Isaac prefigured." 

Before giving us their untrustworthy and absurd productions on the topo- 
graphy of Jerusalem, Protestants of our day w T ould do well to take cognizance 
of this text. Their ancestors of the sixteenth or seventeenth century would 
never have engaged in such expeditions as those of which the Fergussons or 
Robinsons give us a spectacle. No, there certainly remained to them too much 
knowledge and good sense for that. Nor had they ever on this subject any other 
opinion than that of tradition and the belief of the Church. But the more the 
light declines the more enormities the silliest have a chance to introduce. 

In their perversity they have gone so far as to deny that Golgotha was a 
mountain or hill at all. Listen: "A curious circumstance which has escaped 
the notice of many critics," says one of these writers, " and which E. Robinson 
alone, to my knowledge, has observed, is that the idea everywhere admitted, 
that Calvary was a mountain, a hill, an elevated place, has no foundation ; noth- 
ing in the Scripture authorizes it. The slight elevation (of eighteen paces) on 
which they pretend to show the place of three crosses appears to be the only 
cause of this universally-received supposition. It is found expressed for the first 
time in the Itin&raire de Bordeaux {monticulMS Golgotha), then in Rufinus (Golgo- 
thana rupes). But Eusebius, Cyril, and Jerome never speak of Calvary as an 
eminence or a mountain " (Topogr. of Jo- us., p. 189). 

To this we reply by a simple question : Was the Temple of Solomon on a 
mountain ? Assuredly, since the Scripture tells us so — in rnonte Moria. How, then, 
can any one deny that Calvary is also a mountain, its elevation surpassing that 
of Mount Moria 2 Let Protestants choose one of two courses: either to speak no 
more of Sion and Mount Moria, or to cease to cavil at us when we say the Moun- 
tain of Gahary ; for the height of Calvary is nearly the same as that of Sion, and 
greater than that of the mount of the Temple. 



Authenticity "of Calvary and the Holy Sepulc7ire. 37 



To destroy the memory of the place where the Man-God was pleased to sub- 
mit to death, and a death so extraordinary, in order to save mankind ; or of the 
place of His tomb after eighteen centuries of veneration and love, is an enterprise 
unattainable by such explorers as Robinson, or the whole pack of his noisy and 
numerous followers. 

From that enterprise and from all the efforts that have been made for its suc- 
cess there will only result — or rather, there has already only resulted — deep shame 
both to the quixotic chiefs who have organized and conducted it and to their de- 
luded followers. Inaugurated at London, the natal soil of all the extravagances 
which overrun the world, by one Fergusson (who has never seen Jerusalem except 
at the bottom of his chimerical brain), directed afterwards by E. Robinson, and 
sustained by the " Palestine Exploration Funds," the rash enterprise is already 
finished ; the signal for the attack was but the commencement of the discom- 
fiture. 

Yet, as all these humbugs, all these scrapings of ignorant scepticism, have 
been crammed into almost all the narratives of Protestants ; decanted into almost 
all their dictionaries of the Bible, and into the more advanced commentaries of 
the Y. M. C. A., where they have introduced the strangest confusion ; put finally 
into little bottles, scented and gilded with bigotry, to serve as milk and sweet 
things for the sucklings of the Sunday-schools ; and as all these compilations 
from the Researches to the dictionaries, from the dictionaries to the primers, con- 
tain nothing but the everlasting repetition of the same old story, and a continual 
humming of a few broken notes from the modulations of Robinson — considering 

that these collections, all silly though they are, have, however, their destiny 

luibeat sua fata libelli, as the poet says — we believe it is right to add here some 
observations gathered from various sources on the incontestable authenticity of 
the holy places in question. 

THE AUTHENTICITY OF CALVARY AND THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. 

Nothing is easier than to explain how the traditions relating to these holy 
places have been preserved and handed down to us. If from the earliest ages 
there has been accorded great importance to the most obscure localities of Judea 
because of certain events that took place there, why should there not attach a 
much greater importance to those places which have been sanctified by the suf- 
ferings and triumphant resurrection of our Saviour ? Were not these places per- 
fectly known to the Apostle St. John, to Mary, Mother of Jesus, and to all the 
holy women who accompanied Him, and who visited again and again the sacred 
tomb ? Were they not also known to Nicodemus, to Joseph of Arimathea, who 
possessed both the tomb and the garden that surrounded it % No mind can re- 
fuse to believe that all these friends of Jesus — that the apostles, whom fear kept 
for a moment from Calvary, but whom love soon drew to the holy tomb ; that the 
seventy-two disciples, who were then all together at Jerusalem ; that the relations 
of the Saviour according to the tlesh, who were ignorant of none of the circum- 
stances of His life and death or of the acts of His ministry — were witnesses suffi- 
ciently numerous and vigilant to testify fro all the local circumstances of those 
imposing facts. Nothing escapes love, especially such a love as was that of 
St. John, of the holy women, of Mary Magdalen, of the Mother of Jesus. Yes, 
love gathers the smallest details of this solemn drama, where nothing is small ; 
it is nourished and sustained by them. The holy Gospels, especially that of St. 



38 



Tenth Station. 



John, are filled with these particulars. Those that are not written are engraved 
in the depths of the heart, ever to be the subject of the most touching recitals 
and imperishable souvenirs. The awful tragedy was enacted on a circumscribed 
and elevated theatre, where nothing could escape the view of the spectators ; here 
the sacrilegious hands of the murderers violently stripped Him of His garments; 
there in that narrow cavern they confined Him while making immediate prepa- 
rations for His crucifixion; there they cruelly stretched Him on the hard cross; 
here Mary, surrounded by the holy women, heard in the maternal anguish of her 
heart the repeated blows of the hammer which drove the nails into His palpitat- 
ing flesh ; there sat the soldiers who, with blood-stained hands, divided His gar- 
ments and cast lots for His seamless coat. 

From the accursed land that it had been, these places became for the Chris- 
tians most sacred ; and as they were outside the city, and, moreover, belonged in 
part to one of the most influential of the disciples, the latter had less difficulty 
in going there to pray and meditate in solitude and recollection. The general 
tradition in the Church of Jerusalem is that the Blessed Virgin, whose habita- 
tion was near the Cenacle, at that time within the walls, loved to repair often to 
these sacred places. 

The knowledge of these places was not long confined to a small number of 
disciples ; for very soon after the death of Jesus and the great events of the 
Resurrection and Pentecost, there was formed at Jerusalem a numerous regular 
congregation, rather than a flourishing Church; as we know, it was recruited at 
first only among the Jews, the countrymen of the Saviour and witnesses of His 
miracles and His death. This church had for its first bishops two cousins of the 
Saviour, James, and after him Simeon, both of the number of the seventy-two 
disciples. Providence designed that their episcopates, well known in the history 
of the Church, should be very long, so as the better to confirm the holy tradi- 
tions. 

As we know from history and from the Scripture, they held their assemblies 
and had their habitations ordinarily at the summit of Mount Sion, at the holy 
Cenacle, which was not distant from Calvary. So we should take but little ac- 
count of the supposition of certain Catholic authors, who assert that if the first 
Christians erected sanctuaries, it was surely on places so holy, watered by the 
blood of the Redeemer; for, according to Scripture and tradition, they cele- 
brated and received the holy mysteries at that time in private houses, and it was 
not till a later period that they built churches. 

At the beginning of the troubles of Judea, under Vespasian (but thirty-seven 
years after the death of the Saviour), the Christians of Jerusalem, remembering the 
prophecy of Jesus Christ regarding the fall of the city and the destruction of the 
Temple, and the precursory signs He had given, abandoned Jerusalem and retired 
to Pella, beyond the Jordan. As soon as the city was destroyed they returned 
to live among its ruins. Who can believe that in the course of a few months they 
could forget altogether the position of the holy places ? Besides, being outside 
the precincts of the habitations and the walls, how could they suffer from the 
siege ? Surely the Roman army did not wipe from existence a rocky hill. We 
learn, too, from Josephus that it was on the opposite side of the city that all the 
force of the siege was concentrated. The faithful must have been able to find 
again their beloved Cenacle of Sion, intact and just as they had left it; for the 
same Jewish historian tells us that after the burning of the Temple, and the tak- 



Authenticity of Calvary and the Holy Sepulchre, 39 



ing of Bezetha and the tower of Antonia, the Jews, demoralized by despair and 
fury, suddenly lost their reason, and never dreamed of fortifying themselves in 
their redoubtable fortresses of Mount Sion, the most impregnable part of their 
city. 

Let us come to another epoch. That the holy places were perfectly known, 
and frequented as places of pilgrimage, in the year 102 after the death of the Sa- 
viour — the 139th of our era — we can prove beyond a doubt by a prominent histo 
rical fact. We read in the pagan authors of that epoch, but particularly in the 
life of the Emperor Hadrian, by Dion, a Roman senator and consul, that this 
prince, after having made a horrible butchery of the Jews in their last revolt 
against the Romans under Barcochebas, and after having retaken Jerusalem in 
the year 139, undertook to destroy with the same stroke the remembrance of the 
Holy City, the focus of revolt for the Jews and the centre of the new religion of 
Jesus Christ. 

The same pagan authors quoted by St. Paulinus (Ejk xi. ad Sev.), Sulpicius 
Severus (Hist., 1. ii.), and St. Jerome (Ep. ad Paul, xiii.), all great personages 
about the commencement of the fourth century, inform us of the means employed 
by Hadrian to attain these ends : 

He transported a Roman colony to Jerusalem, whence he banished all the 
Jews, forbidding them under pain of death to return. He rebuilt the city, ex- 
tending its limits beyond Calvary. He changed its name into that of JElia Gapi- 
tolina — the first of these terms expressing the name of his family, the other the 
name of Jupiter Capitolinus, to whom he dedicated the city. In fine, to keep 
the Christians from the holy places, which it was their joy to visit and venerate, 
he built two temples to the false gods on Calvary and the Holy Sepulchre; the 
statue of Venus Adultera was erected on the spot where Jesus had offered for the 
redemption of the world His divine and innocent flesh, and the image of Jupiter 
was placed on the tomb of the Man-God. In the meantime the Grotto of Bethle- 
hem was devoted to the worship of Adonis. 

Thus Providence ordained that idolatry itself should publish, by its very pro- 
fanations, this sublime doctrine of the cross which it was its interest to hide or 
calumniate. All these official profanations could not, it is clear, destroy in the 
Christians the memory of the holy places; in fact, these idols only served to in- 
dicate them. Moreover, the pagans themselves did not expect that the temple of 
Venus erected on the summit of Calvary would prevent the Christians from visit- 
ing that sacred hill; but they rejoiced in the thought that the Nazarenes, in com- 
ing to pray at Golgotha, would seem to adore the daughter of Jupiter. This is a 
clear and signal proof that before the middle of the second century the Church of 
Jerusalem preserved an accurate knowledge of the holy places and loved to vene- 
rate them by frequent pilgrimages. 

Here we might safely close our demonstration, which no longer, indeed, 
rests only on a tradition invested with all the marks of veracity, but also on 
a historic official monument. It was, indeed, by the demolition of these 
impure temples that the great work of the magnificent sanctuary ordered by 
Constantine the Great, and executed under the eye of St. Helena his mother, was 
begun. The historian Eusebius was charged with the principal superintendence 
of this structure. We may read in his works long and beautiful descriptions of 
it. We know, even with ample details, all the reconstructions which have been 
made in ages subsequent to that epoch, but which are too numerous to enume- 



40 



Tenth Nation. 



rate, even in an abridged form; but the little we have given on this subject will 
suffice to remove from all reasonable minds even the least possibility of doubt. 

♦ It is thus that God wished the tomb of his Son should be glorified throughout 
all ages, as He had foretold by one of his most illustrious prophets : Et crit 
sepulchrum Ejus gloriosum. And yet certain so-called Christians are tormenting 
their minds to prove that it has been unknown and forgotten ! 

Let us reproduce here some lines from a work written by a Protestant, but 
remarkable for its exactness, its spirit of observation, and its unprejudiced tone : 

" Some of our officers visited this church [of the Holy Sepulchre] in company 
with a [Protestant] clergyman. While their minds were occupied with the 
thoughts which such a place is calculated to inspire in all but a perverted heart, 
the latter annoyed them by the frequent remark, 'Well, I hope you will not be 
offended, but I am somewhat sceptical on this point.' At length one of the 
officers said to him : 'Please reserve your doubts for discussion elsewhere ; we 
do not believe all that is told us, but know that not far from this, if not here, 
the Saviour died.' 

" . . . He who believes and bows down is more to be envied than he that 
stands scornfully erect because unconvinced by so many feet and inches. He 
who in such places with tape-line and rule employs himself measuring the 
sizes of objects and their exact distances from each other, thereby endeavoring 
not only to destroy what he persuades himself are the illusions, but absolutely 
undermining the religious belief, of others, is little better than a heathen. 

" My apology for touching on this subject, which is without my sphere and 
above my capacity, is the pain I have felt, with others, in witnessing the effects 
of the cavilling spirit of those who plume themselves on being considered the 
most literary of modern travellers to the Holy Land. For their peace of mind 
here I hope that they may never know how much they have injured a cause of 
which some of them are the professed champions ; and for their future welfare 
every true Christian will pray that the evil has not been^ premeditated. I have 
not meant to reflect upon those who honestly doubt; for faith is not a product of 
reason, but a gift, an inspiration from on high. I allude to those whose intel- 
lectual pride prompts them to parade their own attainments in opposition to, 
rather than in search of, truth — which never shrinks from a fair encounter. In the 
words of Milton, ' Truth is strong, next to the Almighty.' The mists of human 
prejudice cannot long withstand the penetrating light of truth, which is the 
purest ray reflected from the brightest gem in the diadem of the Great Jehovah." 
(W. F. Lynch, Ekpedit. to the Dead Sea, pp. 410-414.) 

In the Bulletin of the Work of the Pilgrimages in the Holy Land (number for 
March, 1870, p. 493, 494), we read these words, with which we will conclude: 

"Our separated brethren have been pleased to ask subterranean Jerusalem to 
furnish proofs against the authenticity of the ancient tradition which places 
Calvary and the Holy Sepulchre in the interior of the basilica of St. Helena. 
This remarkable labor has, on the contrary, proved that the peculiar veneration 
with which all nations have regarded this sanctuary has not been misplaced. 
All the discoveries that have been made attest it unquestionably: the nature 
of the ruins, many times built upon, and especially the direction of the ancient 
walls, the foundation of which has been discovered and traced almost through- 
out their whole extent." 

This, then, is truly Calvary ; everything invincibly leads us to believe it. 



Vestments of Our Saviour. 



41 



Yes, this is, of all places in the universe, the most holy, the most redoubtable. 
Here before me Heaven was reconciled to earth; here sin was fully expiated ; 
here an outraged G-od was superabundantly satisfied ; here the dust was tinged 
and the world purified by the blood of the Son of God; here, eighteen hundred 
and forty-two years ago, was perpetrated the most horrible of all crimes ; here 
God gave to man the most astonishing proofs of His love; here the Holy of 
holies, covered with opprobrium and wounds, was put to death between two 
thieves ; here Nature, convulsed at the death of her Ruler, showed forth won- 
ders and prodigies ; here the sacred body of my God, taken down from the 
cross, was laid in the sepulchre in the rock ; here the divine Majesty, coming 
forth in splendor from the tomb, avenged the awful outrage offered to heaven ; 
here impiety was silenced and laid prostrate; here the ice of the most obdurate 
hearts is suddenly melted by the fire of charity ; here all eyes are wet with tears, 
all lips are moved in prayer, all souls are filled with compunction and love ! 

But let us resume our sacred way and follow one by one the last steps of our 
Redeemer. 

To arrive at the Tenth Station, where our Lord was stripped of His garments, 
the first of those included in the interior of the church, we must, immediately 
on crossing the threshold, go to the right towards the eastern extremity, a dis- 
tance from the entrance of about seveuty paces. This passage is partially 
vaulted, and is therefore dark. 

The executioners stopped, then, at a short distance from the place of cruci- 
fixion to make their final preparations, the first of which was to take, or rather 
tear, from the person of Jesus Christ the garments which covered Him, and which 
now adhered to His bleeding flesh. 

The attire worn by the Hebrews was composed of several pieces — namely, a 
cloak or coat, a robe, and beneath this a kind of shirt or tunic. A robe and a 
tunic of our Lord have been venerated at Treves and at Argenteuil for many 
centuries. 

In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre a chapel six feet wide, in front of which 
rise two pillars forming three arches, is consecrated to the memory of this dolor- 
ous spoliation. The altar is neat but not remarkable. It is in possession of the 
Greeks. A pious tradition points out at about thirty paces from here a cavity 
under the rocks, where it is believed that our Lord was confined a few moments 
while the preparations for his death were being made. This little chapel is 
called the prison. There is but one picture, at the further end, before which the 
Greeks keep lamps constantly burning. 

REMARKS ON THE VESTMENTS OF OUR SAVIOUR. 

According to the Roman laws, the garments of the crucified were to be the 
property of the executioners, or the soldiers charged with the execution. They 
are mentioned in the statutes and designated spoils. However, the relations 
could redeem them, and the price of this redemption was also mentioned in the 
law. u To be crucified (en songe)^ says an ancient writer, u is fortunate for the 
poor, because thereby they are raised above everybody; but a sad thing for the 
rich, because before being exalted they are despoiled of everything. 1 ' 

Before being sold by his brethren for some pieces of silver, Joseph, the son of 
Jacob, was stripped of the robe given him by his father, and afterwards cast into 



42 



Tenth Station. 



a dry cistern; sold in like manner, for a few pieces of silver, by the perfidious 
apostle, Jesus is despoiled of the robe woven and given Him by His Mother, and 
cast into the dungeon of criminals. 

" It is important to consider," says St. Ambrose, "who it is that ascends. I 
behold Him naked. It is in this manner that He should ascend who is prepared 
to vanquish the world. No sooner was the first Adam overcome than he seeks 
clothing. He who puts off his garments goes forward to subdue the devil, the 
world, sin, and death. As the first man coming forth from the hands of his 
Creator enters into the earthly paradise ; so also the second Adam prepares to 
enter the paradise of heaven, to open it to His posterity " (L. x. in Luc). Let us 
adore profoundly the humiliations of our Saviour. 

We know that it was only after having crucified Him that the soldiers, re- 
turning to the spot where they had stripped our Saviour, commenced to divide 
His garments among themselves. Of what did they consist ? According to the 
usage of the Jews our Lord must have worn: 1st, a tunic, or kind of seamless 
shirt; 2d, over it a flowing robe resembling the ecclesiastical cassock; 3d, an 
outer vestment or cloak, which could be easily thrown off aud was not worn in 
the house (the Jews had no underclothing for the body or limbs) ; 4th, a girdle, 
which served to fasten ihe robe and hold it up in front to facilitate walking ; 
and 5th, shoes. Our Lord must have worn shoes, as St. John the Baptist gives 
us to understand when he says: "The latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy 
to loose." 

On the plurality of the vestments of our Lord a grave author thus expresses 
himself : " There cannot be found a text more clear and decisive than these words 
of St. Mark, reporting the history of the woman afflicted with an issue of blood : 
' Jesus,' says he, ' knowing in Himself that a virtue had gone out from Him, 
turned towards the crowd and said: Who hath touched My garments ? — "Quis 
tetigit vcstimenta mea?" For the Evangelist to have employed the plural, must 
not Jesus Christ have worn several vestments? We could, assuredly, confine our- 
selves to this sacred text; but let us hear some commentators on this text of 
Job: "With the multitude of them my garment is consumed, and they have 
girded me about, as with the collar of my coat." Of these words of St. John : 
" Simon Peter having heard that it was the Lord, girt his coat about him (for he 
was naked) and cast himself into the sea," Dr. Allioli gives this explanation : 
" That is to say, he was almost naked; he had on only an undergarment, a shirt 
(or tunic) ; over this undergarment he promptly put on an overgarment, the robe 
or coat, and girded it with a cincture." It is in this sense that we are to under- 
stand the nakedness of David where it is said that he danced naked before the 
ark — that is to say, not having on his outer garments. 

Hence each of the four soldiers — an ordinary guard was reduced to this num- 
ber — took his part of the vestments of Jesus. As to His tunic, struck, no doubt, 
at the rarity or beauty of its texture or material, they resolved not to cut it, but 
to dispose of it by lot, throwing their dice into the helmet of one of the soldiers, 
which he held for that purpose. Thus was accomplished on Jesus those words 
of his ancestor David: "They have pierced my hands and my feet; they have 
numbered all my bones. And they have looked and stared upon me. They 
have parted my garments among them; and upon my vesture they have cast 
lots" (Ps. xxi. 17, 18). 

The cities of Treves and Argenteuil possess two tunics which they claim be- 



Vestments of Oar Saviour. 



43 



longed to our Lord, and each city believes herself possessed of the seamless gar- 
ment, which has occasioned in some minds a regrettable confusion; but recent 
studies have shown that both these relics may be authentic. It is certain that 
the long robe preserved and venerated at Treves is different from that at Argen- 
teuil. We will occupy ourselves first with that of Treves, which appears to be 
the first that was brought into Europe. 

The Robe of Treves. — St. Helena sent the robe of our Lord to Agritius, 
Bishop of Treves, which was then one of the first cities of the empire, the capi- 
tal of Gaul, the residence of the emperors of the West until the fourth century, 
and the abode of the empress who presented the city with this precious relic, 
adding many other relics of the Passion. It is probable that it was preserved 
at Jerusalem during the first three centuries, until the discovery of the true 
cross, when it was offered to St. Helena, who could purchase it at a great price. 

The reader who desires further details on this holy relic, and on the evidences 
which prove its antiquity and authenticity, can consult, among numerous other 
works on the subject, the excellent and voluminous production which Professor 
Marx composed, at the request of Mgr. the Archbishop of Treves, at the time of 
the last secular exposition of the holy relic. 

It was wonderful to see the immense concourse of people which at that time 
resorted from all parts to the city of Treves to venerate the holy relic ; the very 
infidel papers noted this occurrence with admiration and astonishment. And so 
it has been in all ages. I read in Jakob Lydius, a Protestant writer of the sev- 
enteenth century, a proof of these great pilgrimages. Going to Liege in company 
with a gentleman of high rank, who was returning with his attendants from the 
waters of Spa, they met many thousand persons, who thronged the roads in all 
directions. u The gentleman whom I accompanied," says, the author, "having 
had the honor of an interview with a prince returning from the pilgrimage, told 
me afterwards that among the singularities relative to this holy tunic was this : 
that persons most skilled in the texture of cloth and in the art of dyeing could 
not determine either the color or the material of this holy vestment " (Florvm 
*l><irsio ad Passionem J. C, p. 258). 

Long before the faithful were struck with the same singularity ; for Nonnus, 
a poet of the fifth century, in his paraphrase in verse of the Gospel of St. John, 
expresses himself as follows : 

" Ne rubrani hanc veri coloris tunicam dissecemus, 
Habeutem formam divinam et peregrinam/' 

At the time of the exposition of this venerable object in 1844 many miracu- 
lous cures took place. Of these the learned Dr. Hanson examined and de- 
scribed twenty-four remarkable cases, which may be read in a work that he pub- 
lished, and which was shortly after translated into French. 

The Tunic op Argenteuil. — It is known that Charlemagne received this 
tunic as a present from the celebrated empress of Constantinople, Irene. Gisele, 
one of the daughters of Charlemagne, having wished to consecrate herself to 
God, and having been elected abbess of the monastery of Argenteuil, the illus- 
trious emperor resolved to present the holy relic to the church of the monastery, 
which he did by solemnly translating it thither. 

Charlemagne had received relics from Irene, Ilnroun-al-Iiaschid, and others. 
We cau hardly suppose that among persons of this rank there could be such a 



44 



Eleventh Station. 



thing as offering presents of little value or supposititious objects. Charlemagne 
himself was far from being credulous on the subject of relics; for more than 
once, in his Capitularies, he prohibits the veneration of the bodies of martyrs 
and saints whose relics are doubtful. The numerous details attached to the 
holy relic anterior to the time of Charlemagne are recounted with great precision 
by the father of the history of the Franks, St. Gregory of Tours. 

The reader who may desire ampler details concerning the holy tunic of Ar- 
genteuil can find them in the Recherches Religieuses et Historiques sur la Ste. Hole 
de notre Seigneur J. C, et sur le Pelerinage d'Argentmil, by L. F. Gu6rin. 

The Cincture. — According to Ronault de Fleury the cincture of our Lord 
is of leather, and is preserved at Aix-la-Chapelle ; the extremities are united and 
sealed with the seal of Constantine. 



ELEVENTH STATION. 



JESUS IS NAILED TO THE CROSS. 

" They crucified Him, and with Him two others, one on each side, and Jesus in the midst " 
(St. John xix. 18). 

The potion of wine mingled with gall and myrrh is offered to Jesus — "Et 
dederunt Ei vinum bibere cum felle mixtum. Et cum gustasset, noluit bibere " 
(Matt, xxvii. 34); u Et dabant Ei bibere myrrhatum vinum; et non accepit " 
(Mark. xv. 23). 

It was the custom to present the condemned, before the terrible act of cruci- 
fixion, with a drink composed of wine, gall, and myrrh. We must not confound 
the two drinks presented to Jesus Christ. According to St. Matthew and St. 
Mark, He was offered, before being crucified, some wine mingled with gall and 
myrrh — a substance ©f extreme bitterness. It was the usage, say Maimonides, 
Fagius, and Kimchi, to give this beverage to patients to strengthen them, and to 
benumb them against their sufferings. Apuleius (Metamorph., viii. and x.) speaks 
of a man who used to strengthen himself against the lash by potions of myrrh. 
Jesus refused this beverage. Again, when He said, " Sitio " — I thirst — they pre- 
sented Him vinegar ; this vinegar was a part of the rations given to the soldiers. 
It was a kind of sour wine of which Columella, Pliny, and Cato have told us the 
composition, and which is still used in Spain and Italy during the time of 
harvest. 

But Jesus drank of neither potion, because, as Drach very well observes 
(note on the 2me Lettre aVun Bab, com., p. 277) : " Going to sacrifice on the al- 
tar of the cross, He ought to drink nothing intoxicating, conformably to the pre- 
cept of Leviticus" (x. 9). Besides, it was still forbidden to drink, after the man- 
ducation of the paschal lamb, any other wine than that of the chalice which was 
blessed at the close of the ceremony — the chalice which in the holy Cenacle our 
Lord changed into His precious blood. This explains why our Saviour said after 




ACTUAL PLACE OP THE XL STATION. 



/ 



Jesus is Nailed to the Cross. 



45 



the consecration of the Eucharistic wine : " Non bibam amodo de hoc genimine 
vitis" (Matt. xxvi. 29). 

These two drinks presented to Jesus were literally prophetic ; for we read in 
Psalm lxviii. 22: "And they gave me gall for my food, and in my thirst they 
gave me vinegar to drink " ; and in the Lamentations of Jeremias (iii. 5, 6, 15) : 
" He hath built round about me, and he hath compassed me with gall and labor. 
He hath set me in darkness as those that are dead for ever. He hath filled me 
with bitterness, he hath inebriated me with wormwood." 

Taken from the prison into which they had cast Him, and dragged naked by 
the executioners to the place where all was to be consummated, Jesus has no 
sooner declined the beverage than He is extended on the cross ; a long nail, with 
heavy blows of a hammer, is driven into each of His hands ; a thick nail is 
driven in the same manner into His feet. Each cruel stroke pierces the heart of 
His tender Mother, and crucifies that soul which lives only in her Son. The 
blood gushes from all these wounds. Jesus offers His torments to His Father : 
" Remember, O My Father ! My poverty, My bitterness, My gall and wormwood " 
(Jer., he. cit.) And this same prayer He still makes to His Father in our be- 
half, as He shows Him His wounds and offers Him His blood. In fine, that we 
may have no possible doubt of it, this powerful cry escapes His throbbing 
breast: u Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do ! " And know 
they in reality what they are doing, these brutal soldiers who know only the 
shedding of blood ? But thou, O my soul ! who by thy sin hast been the true, 
the only executioner, what sayest thou to thy Saviour at this moment ? Happy 
he who has something to pardon his brother, and who can, at so sweet a price, 
enter into a participation of the prayer and pardons of Jesus! 

Thus have been accomplished the prophecies which said : "He hath borne 
the sins of many " (that is to say, of all), " and hath prayed for the transgres- 
sors " (Is. liii. 12, NaMM). 

From the Station of despoliation to that of the Crucifixion, which is the Elev- 
enth, we turn about fifty paces to the left. To reach there we must ascend to 
that place which at present is especially known by the name of Calvary. It is a 
rock, and is about eighteen or twenty feet high. Two flights of stairs lead up to 
it, one of which has eighteen steps — much higher than ordinary stairs. Above the 
whole compartment is twenty-one feet long by eighteen feet wide. It is divided 
in the middle by two large pilasters, which sustain the vault and form three 
arches. The walls are covered with marble, and the pavement is of the same 
material. It is in the compartment or chapel on the right that the Station of 
the Crucifixion is to be made ; it is there that the sacrilegious hands of the 
executioners fastened our Saviour to the cross. The spot is marked by a large 
circle of marble incrustations of various colors, among which red predominates, 
so as to indicate that it was here our Saviour dyed the earth with His precious 
blood. The place before the altar is very beautiful and adorned with magnificent 
candelabra ; nine lamps are kept constantly burning there. The picture above 
the altar represents in a striking manner the subject of this Eleventh Station. The 
Latin fathers, to whom this chapel belongs, celebrate the Holy Mysteries there 
every day. 

I myself had this great happiness. There, amid a pressing crowd of pilgrims 
from all nations, some speaking, some praying, some weeping aloud ; in the 
midst of Turkish soldiers with covered heads, who with their loud babbling 



46 Twelfth Station. 

and laughing made a horrid uproar, I celebrated the holy Sacrifice of the Mass. 
Far from being a hindrance to my recollection, all this confusion only served to 
render it more .profound. Around my Saviour there was a far greater tumult 
when, in this very place, He expiated my crimes by the same sacrifice which I 
was then renewing. 

The terrible drama was continued on the person of the two thieves — "Et tunc 
cum eo crucifigunt duos latrones, unum a dexteris, et alium a sinistris Ejus" (St. 
Matt, xxvii. 38; St. Mark xv. 27; St. Luke xxiii. 33; St. John xix. 18). And 
thus was accomplished that passage of the Scripture which says: "He was re- 
puted with the wicked " (Is. liii. 12 ; St. Mark xv. 28). But He who is placed 
in the rank of criminals justifies all nations by His doctrine, purifies them by 
miraculous aspersion, becomes the chosen host of God, holy and efficacious 
enough to avert from us His just indignation, to expiate the crimes of all, and to 
procure us everlasting peace. 

Thus, finally, was also accomplished that prophecy of His ancestor, speak- 
ing in His name and describing His dolors : " They have pierced my hands and 
my feet " — signifying, says St. Augustine, the nails which fastened His sacred 
hands and feet to the cross. But He who is bruised in His infirmity distributes 
the spoils of the strong, and He is the invincible arm that God displays to the 
view of all nations (Isaias). 



TWELFTH STATION. 



THE DEATH OF JESUS CHRIST. 

The death of our Saviour is the subject of the Twelfth Station. 

TOPOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 

This Station is made at the spot where the cross was planted, in a hole made 
in the rock on the very place where Jesus expired for the love of man. The Sta- 
tion is in the left compartment of the Chapel of Calvary. The hole in which the 
cross was fixed is covered with a slab of marble having a corresponding hole of 
the same diameter, garnished on the interior with a ring of silver. Upon this 
base stands an altar, consisting of a movable table, belonging to the Greeks, 
whose intolerance towards the Latins has many times bred scandal in this holy 
place, and whose ignorance has caused frequent blunders, to the detriment of the 
respect due to this sacred Station. The wall behind the altar is decorated with 
rich ornaments, in the arrangement of which very little taste has been displayed. 
There is also a crucifix, with the Blessed Virgin and St. John in a standing 
attitude at its feet, the effect of which is terrible. Thirteen lamps are found on 
the first and fifteen on the second plane, and the four corners of the altar-table 
are occupied by four candelabra. 

We must say here, however, that the cavity which is at present at the summit 




ACTUAL PLACE OP THE Xll. STATION. 



"Jits Byes behold the Nations" 



47 



of Calvary is not actually that in which the cross of the Saviour was planted. 
After the conflagration in 1808, of which they were the sacrilegious authors, the 
Greeks overturned Calvary, took the stone in which the true cross had been fixed 
to send it to Constantinople — to them a fitting Rome — and put another in its 
place. The true stone was lost by the wreck of the vessel which carried it. 

According to tradition, Jesus Christ, when hanging upon the cross, had His 
face turned towards the west, which He was very soon to draw to Himself. Be- 
hind Him lay criminal Jerusalem, which had exiled Him from her bosom, and 
which was now putting Him to death. To the Christian traditions which estab- 
lish this circumstance are added the Jewish, which state that He was placed 
thus because He was not worthy to see Jerusalem at His death. Alas ! it is thou, 
O deicidal city, who art become unworthy of the dying glances of Jesus. Trem- 
ble, O perfidious soil ! It is of thee and thy unhappy people that it is written : 
"I will show them my back and not my face in the day of their destruction"; 
and again: "As a burning wind will I scatter them before the enemy " (Jer. 
xviii. 17). 

" Oculi Ejus super gentes respiciunt " (Ps. lxv. 7). His dying eyes are turned 
towards the nations ; drawn by His grace, the nations will turn towards Him. 
"This circumstance," says the learned Cornelius a Lapide, "has given rise to 
what is called the orientation of our churches. From the earliest Christian times 
these edifices have been laid out in such a manner that, the altar being at the 
eastern end, the divine Host in the act of solemn sacrifice keeps exactly the posi- 
tion Christ had when offering His bloody sacrifice on Calvary, and the crucifix 
which surmounts the tabernacle preserves to oar remembrance that Christ died 
with His blessed face turned- towards the nations of the west." 

Two dark, round stones indicate the places w T here the crosses of the two 
thieves were set up. These crosses were not placed on the same line as that of 
the Saviour, but formed with it a kind of triangle, so that Jesus could see the 
two criminals crucified near Him. 

Observations and. Reflections. 
It is about midday. Jesus is crucified. At the moment the cross is raised the 
Temple re-echoes the sound of the trumpets which celebrate the immolation of 
the paschal Lamb. 

" Nothing," says Catherine Emmerich, " could be more terrible, and at the 
same time more touching, than to see, in the midst of the insulting cries of the 
archers, the Pharisees, and the populace who looked on from afar, the sacred 
cross now tottering a moment on its base, now sinking in the earth ; but there 
arose towards it also voices of pity and devotion. The most holy souls in the 
world — the Blessed Mary, St. John, Mary Magdalene, the holy women, and all 
those whose hearts were pure — saluted with dolorous accents the Word Made 
Flesh elevated upon the cross, and lifted up towards Him their trembling hands, 
as if to aid Him in His sufferings. But when they dropped the cross with woful 
sound into the hole of the rock, then there was a moment of solemn silence ; the 
whole world seemed struck with a sensation never before experienced. . . . 
The sacred cross was planted for the first time in the midst of the earth as 
another tree of life in paradise, and from the wounds of Jesus flowed out four 
sacred streams to fertilize the world and make of it the paradise of the new Adam " 
(Doulour. Passion, pp. 343, 344). 



48 



Twelfth Station. 



The misguided populace, the enemies of Jesus, feel nothing of these things; 
they outvie one another in insulting Him: a They that passed by blasphemed 
Him, wagging their heads,* and saying: Vah, Thou that destroyest the temple 
of God, and in three days dost rebuild it: save Thyself; if Thou be the Son of 
God come down from the cross. In like manner also the chief priests and the 
scribes and ancients mocking, said: He saved others; Himself He cannot save: 
if lie be the king of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and Ave will 
believe Him. He trusted in God: let Him deliver Him if He will have Him ; 
for He said : I am the Son of God. . . . And the people stood beholding Him, 
and the rulers with them derided Him, saying: He saved others ; let Him save 
Himself, if He be Christ, the elect of God. And the soldiers also mocked Him, 
coming to Him, and offering Him vinegar,! and saying: If Thou be the king of 
the Jews, save Thyself" (St. Evangel, passim). 

"And the self-same thing the thieves also that were crucified with Him re- 
proached Him with " (St. Matt, xxvii. 44). One of the two, nevertheless, suddenly 
ceases his blasphemies; in the infinite mercy of Jesus a ray of divine grace 
illumines his soul; he recognizes his Saviour, blesses His name, confesses his 
own crimes, accepts in a perfect spirit of penance the chastisements due to them, 
and receives pardon. "And one of the robbers who were hanged on the cross, 
persisting in Ms impious blindness, blasphemed Him, saying : If Thou be the Christ, 
save Thyself and us. And the other answering rebuked him, saying: Neither 
dost thou fear God, seeing thou art under the same condemnation? And we in- 
deed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds ; but this Man hath done 
no evil. And he said to Jesus : Lord, remember me when Thou shalt come into 
Thy kingdom ! And Jesus said to him: Amen, I say to thee, this day shalt 
thou be with Me in Paradise " (St. Luke xxiii. 39-43). And that promise of mercy 
was the second of the seven words that Jesus pronounced on the cross. 

TRADITIONAL NOTE. 

The crosses of the two thieves were discovered with that of the Saviour by 
St. Helena. That of the good thief was sent to Constantinople and interred in 
the Constantinian Place, and thence transported to Nicosia, in Cyprus (Calmet, 
'Diet, de la Bible, Larron). It is now preserved at Rome in the church of the Holy 
Cross in Jerusalem. It is a transverse of resinous wood, seven feet and six 
inches in length. This interesting relic is one of the elements which have served 
to determine in a precise manner the form of the cross of our Saviour. We know 
that there are many kinds of crosses: crux ftjrca, in the form of the letter Y: 
crux decussa, in the form of a saltier, X: crux commissa, with the horizontal 
piece placed upon the top of the upright, like a capital T, which is simply the 
tau of the Greeks and the ancient Hebrews; the Greek cross, the two transverse 
pieces of which are of equal length and disposed vertically and horizontally, + ; 

* Among the Hebrews this movement of the head was a sign of derision, as we see in many books 
of the Old Testament (Bened. XIV., De Feat. D. et J. 6'., 1. i. ch. vii.) 

t Why vinegar on Calvary, and for what end ? Some authors have thought that it. was prepared 
to stanch the blood by bathing the wounds with sponges ; but it is more probable that it was there 
for the soldiers appointed to guard the crosses, and who were to take their food and drink there. 
Vinegar was formerly the drink of the common people, as we learn from Pcrsius in his fourth satire: 
" Pannosam fa;cem morientis sorbet acoU." Pescennius Niger, according to Spartianus, forbade the 
use of wine during an expedition, and commanded that all shoidd content themselves with vinegar. 
It is said in Ruth : " Eat of the bread, and dip thy morsel in the vinegar." 




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"There was Darkness over the whole Earth." 49 



the cross elancee, crux immissa, our ordinary cross, called the Latin cross, f. 
This is the form of the cross on which our Saviour died, as M. Ronault de Fleury 
clearly demonstrates both by tradition and the most solid reasons (Memoire sur 
Jes lustrum, de la Passion, pp. 63-68). 

" Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His Mother and His Mother's sister, 
Mary of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus, therefore, had seen His 
Mother and the disciple standing, whom He loved, He saith to His Mother : 
Woman, behold thy son. And after that He saith to the disciple : Behold thy 
Mother. And from that hour the disciple took her to his own " (St. John xix. 
25-27). Such were the third words that Jesus pronounced upon the cross. 

TOPOGRAPHICAL NOTE. 

Between the Altar of the Crucifixion and that of the Erection of the Cross is 
a small altar called the Compassion. It is situated where the Holy Virgin, the 
desolate Mother, was standing in front of the cross. This altar belongs to the 
Latin fathers, who celebrate Mass there every day. They cannot offer the holy 
mysteries on the Altar of the Exaltation of the Cross, as it is in the exclusive 
possession of the Greeks; but their close proximity to it consoles them in some 
measure for this privation. 

Mary our Mother. — By addressing His holy Mother as Woman Jesus has 
manifested before the whole world that she is the strong woman — mulier fortis — 
eulogized by the Holy Ghost, the woman predicted from the beginning; and by 
adding these words, Behold thy son, He indicates that St. Joseph was dead, and, 
as tradition infallibly teaches us, that Mary had no other child than Himself. 

Moreover, by virtue of this all-powerful W"rd, which always effects what it 
speaks, Mary became the true mother not only of St. John, but of all faithful 
Christians represented by him. Yes, we believe with the whole Catholic Church, 
and according to the teaching of Origen, that, in virtue of this codicil added to 
His Testament, every Christian, every disciple of the Lord, is in truth a son of 
Mary. u Mary," says St. Augustine, ' l has not given birth to Christ alone, the 
Head of the Church, but, in a supernatural manner, she has become also the 
mother of His members, of all the faithful." She is the mother of God and men, 
the mother of the Judge and of the culprit, the mother of Compassion and of 
those who suffer, the mother of the Conqueror and of those who still combat. 
But to whom is she above all a kind mother ? " To those," says Thomas a Kem- 
pis, " who follow Jesus and Mary, to those who stand by the cross with John and 
Magdalene, with Salome and Simon of Cyrene." And we may add that she has 
brought us forth in sorrow — in sorrow as immense as the ocean. " O my mis- 
tress !" exclaims St. Bona venture, " where art thou? Alas! I see thee on the 
cross itself, where thou dost suffer with thy Son; all His wounds and torments 
are felt in thy heart, for the sword of sorrow lias pierced thy own soul. Thou 
also art crowned with thorns; thou also art fastened to the cross; to thee also 
were given vinegar and gall, and thou wert covered with ignominy." 

THE DARKNESS. 

"Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over the whole earth, until the 
ninth hour " (St. Matt, xxvii. 45 and St. Luke xxiii.44), "and the sun was dark- 
ened " (v. '45). 



50 



Twelfth Station. 



The three synoptic gospels mention identically this darkness and its univer- 
sality and duration; and St. Luke adds: "And the sun was darkened." St. 
John, of course, omits all this, his gospel being principally a collection of facts 
or of discourses omitted by the three other Evangelists. 

This Darkness Predicted. — Long before this darkness — which covered the 
earth at noonday at the death of Jesus — had been announced by the prophets. 
"The Prophet Amos," observes Tertullian, "did not forget this circumstance: 
' On that day, says the Lord God, I will make the sun disappear at noonday, and 
in the midst of the light I will obscure the face of the earth. I will change your 
festal days into days of mourning, and your canticles of joy into lamentation. I 
will cover all reins with sackcloth, and I will place ignominy upon all heads. 
I will plunge Israel into tears as at the death of an only son, and all those who 
are with him shall have their day of sorrow.' Obdurate Jews ! is not this what 
Moses prophesied that you should do at the beginning of the first month of the 
year, when he enjoined upon all the people of Israel to immolate the Lamb to- 
wards evening, and when he announced beforehand that you should celebrate 
in bitterness the solemnity of that day ? For it is the Passover of the Lord, added 
he; in other words, it is the passage or Passion of Jesus Christ. The prophecy 
has had its accomplishment. You have put Jesus Christ to death on the first 
day of the Azymes. And in order that the prediction should be verified, day 
was suddenly converted into night ; darkness will cover the face of the earth at 
noonday; and so it was that ' God changed your festal days into days of mourn- 
ing, and your canticles of joy into lamentations.' What shall I say more? The 
captivity and dispersion with which you were stricken after the Passion of Jesus 
Christ had also been predicted by the Holy Ghost." 

" Isaias," says Tertullian again, " made the same prediction when he said : 
' I will cover the heavens with a veil of darkness' " {Contr. Judceos, ch. x. ; Contr. 
Marc, 1. iv. ch. xlii.) 

Frightful as was this darkness, it was, after all, but material and of short 
duration. How much more terrible shall not that be which is about to cover 
the heart and intellect of the deicidal Jews, and of all unbelievers who, after 
their example, reject our Saviour; and also of all sinners who, having the faith, 
crucify Him anew by some mortal offence committed against one or other of the 
divine commandments ! 

What will it be for the former when for the latter the apostle has words so 
terrible? "It is impossible for those who were once illuminated, have tasted 
also the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost — have, more- 
over, tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come, and are 
fallen away, to be renewed again to penance, crucifying again to themselves the 
Son of God, and making Him a mockery " (Heb. vi. 4-7). " To themselves," for 
they attack the life, glory, and power of Jesus in as far as they suppress and 
check them in their own hearts and in those who were misled ; but they can do 
nothing against Christ Himself. Although He is still rejected by the Jews, mocked 
by the heathen, scourged by sinners, crowned with thorns by the enemies of the 
faith ; although the Gentiles rage and the people devise vain things concerning 
Him, He is made King upon Mount Sion ; His crown is the crown of glory, His 
sceptre the sceptre of omnipotence, and those only are blessed who. adoring, 
love Him, and who, loving, obey Him. (Veight, Life Pictures, p. 217). 



Historical Testimony as to the Darkness. 



51 



HISTORICAL NOTES. 

Not only was the before-mentioned miracle predicted by the prophets ; it struck 
the world with astonishment and left its traces in the pages of history. At the 
risk of appearing prolix we will here sketch them. 

At an epoch comparatively near the apostolic times the holy martyr Lucian, 
priest of the Church of Antioch, a man as remarkable for his virtue and piety as 
for his vast erudition, pronounced, in the examination to which he was subjected 
before being led to death, these remarkable words, preserved to us by the histo- 
rian Rufinus : " If you do not believe the testimony of the earth [he had just been 
speaking of the miraculous splitting of the rock of Golgotha], you must believe 
the superadded testimony of the heavens. Yes, the testimony I produce is that 
same sun which, seeing the crimes committed by the impious on earth, with- 
drew at noonday all his light, hiding his beams in the abysses of space. Read 
the annals of the monarchy, open your own imperial archives, and you will find 
that in the time of Pilate, and when the Christ suffered death, the sun disappeared 
and day was changed into night." 

At a later epoch Tertullian, the immortal author of the Apology, said to the 
pagans concerning this prodigy: " On a sudden the light of day became ex- 
tinct, although the sun was then at his meridian height. Those who ignore 
that this phenomenon had been predicted for the death of the Christ take it 
for an eclipse. But open your archives ; there you will find the prodigy re- 
corded : Et tamen, eum mundi casum relatum in arcanis vestris habetis " 
(Apol, v. 21). 

And undoubtedly such men as Lucian and Tertullian would have taken care 
not to affirm in a manner so positive — the one in the face of the prefect, the other 
in official writing addressed to the emperors — that the archives of the empire 
contained documents relative to the darkness which accompanied the death of 
the Saviour, if they had not an entire certainty of this fact. 

But the data which it was possible to secure on this point were not confined 
to these official collections, always difficult of access to private individuals; two 
writers — whose works, unfortunately, have not reached us in their entirety — have 
given some details of this great event. The first is Thallus, a Greek author who 
flourished in the first century of the Christian era — that is to say, a little after 
the death of the Evangelists, probably even during the life of some among them. 
He composed a history of Syria (Historia Syriacce) in conjunction with another 
writer named Castor, whom Yossius believes to be the son of him of whom there 
is mention in the pleadings of Cicero for King Dejotarus. These two historians 
have, in the third book of their work, spoken of the darkness which covered the 
earth at midday in the eighteenth ^ear of the reign of Tiberius. 

Some time after, in the reign of Hadrian, Phlegon published a kind of chroni- 
cle, ordinarily called the History of the Olympiads., This work, which contains 
sixteen books, is lost, as also the book of Thallus; but there remain to us nume- 
rous fragments, and among them a passage from the thirteenth book where there 
is a description of the darkness we treat of. We will presently return to this pas- 
sage, having first said a word about the author. Phlegon, born at Tralles, in 
Lydia — for which reason he was called the Trail i< in — lived during the reign of 
Antoninus Pius. He left his native land at an early age and went to reside at 
Rome, where he passed the greater part of liis life. The Emperor Hadrian, with 



52 



Twelfth Station. 



whom he was a favorite, issued under the name of Phlegon some memoirs which 
he composed on his own life, and which he durst not publish himself. Besides 
his History of the Olympiads Phlegon wrote a work on Men of the Longest Lives 
and a treatise on Marvellous Things. These last two works are still extant. Phle- 
gon, as may be seen from this short notice, occupied a position which enabled 
him to avail himself of all the resources necessary for the composition of his work. 
Born in Lydia, a country not far from the place where the doctrine of Jesus Christ 
was immediately adopted by a great number of believers, and where the remem- 
brance of the events which signalized the death of the Saviour was less rapidly 
effaced than among those who did not believe; living at Borne, where he was at 
liberty to examine the vast archives of the empire; favored by Hadrian, who 
doubtless procured him all the documents which might be useful to him, Phle- 
gon was, more than any other, in a position to speak with certainty of the great 
event which occupies us. He does so in a few words, but with remarkable pre- 
cision. "In the fourth year of the 202d Olympiad," he says, "there was an 
eclipse of the sun greater than any that had yet been seen. At the sixth hour 
the daylight was superseded by a darkness so thick that the stars appeared in 
the heavens; and a terrible trembling of the earth overturned numerous houses 
in the city of Nicaea, in Bithynia." This passage calls for some observations. Let 
us remark, in the first place, that the phenomenon took place in the fourth year 
of the 202d Olympiad, which, as is well proved, is precisely the year of our 
Saviour's death. Phlegon, it is true, does not give the month or the day, but 
that imports but little; nothing in his narration is opposed to our regarding this 
day as that of the death of Jesus Christ. It is even impossible that it should be 
another day, since there was not in that year any ordinary eclipse of the sun. 
The hour is exactly that indicated by the Evangelists. The darkness, says Phle- 
gon, commenced at the sixth hour. We have seen above that St. Matthew, St. 
Mark, and St. Luke make it commence at the sixth hour also — that is, at mid- 
day — and terminate at the ninth hour, or three o'clock. According to the Greek 
historian this darkness was very thick, since the stars were seen in the sky. Let 
us remark, also, the coincidence of the trembling of the earth, which overthrew a 
great number of buildings in the city of Nice. St. Matthew reports that at the 
death of Jesus Christ the earth trembled and the rocks were rent • "Et terra mot a 
est, et petrse scissa? sunt — a new concordance between the account of St. Matthew 
and that of Phlegon. 

The passage that we have just quoted and explained was one of too great 
importance and utility in the defence of the Christian religion for the apolo- 
gists of Christianity not to cite it in their works, and to conclude from it that 
the eclipse mentioned by Phlegon could be no other than that spoken of by the 
Evangelists. Origen quotes this fragment in his admirable work against Celsus 
(1. ii.) It is found also in the Octamus of Minucius Felix, and in the writings of 
Lactantius, Eusebius, and St. Jerome. 

It is needless to add that the sun was not eclipsed according to the scientific 
signification of the word, but only obscured, as the Gospel most exactly informs 
us. The French Encyclopaedian philosophers of the last century, who have pre- 
tended to see here only an ordinary eclipse, have counted too largely on the 
ignorance of their readers. For, first, this miracle occurred at the Jewish 
Passover — that is to say, at the time of the opiiosition or full moon — and 
whoever has the least knowledge of astronomy is aware that at such a time an 



Historical Notes. 



53 



eclipse of the sun is impossible : and, second, it is well known also that the sun 
cannot remain totally eclipsed longer than five minutes, whereas this darkness 
lasted three hours. In short, if we consult all the astronomical tables that exist 
we will see that there was no solar eclipse in the fourth year of the 102d Olym- 
piad, which is conclusively proved to have been the year in which our Saviour 
died. 

At the risk of being tedious on this point we will add a proof still stronger, 
if possible, than any of the preceding: it is the remembrance preserved in Chi- 
nese literature of this extraordinary darkness, the precise epoch and circum- 
stances of which it has registered in its history. In the Toung-Kian-Kang-tnou 
— a general history of China, a work translated into French by Father Moyria 
de Maillac, and printed at Paris in twelve large quarto volumes, under the direc- 
tion of the learned Deshauterayes, professor of Arabic in the College of France — 
we read (vol. iii. p. 309) : " On the 28th of the third moon (the seventh year 
of the reign of Kouang-ou-ti) there was an eclipse of the sun. On that occasion 
the emperor directed the nobles to examine if there were any abuses in the 
government, with a view to reform, commanding them to freely expose to him 
such as existed, and to give into his own hands all the sealed petitions addressed 
to him on this subject. This prince expressly forbade all to use in future the 
word CMng, or ' holy,' which they employed when speaking of his person or his 
orders. 1 ' 

This fragment furnishes matter for numerous observations ; but I shall con- 
tent myself with stating the facts, which, in my opinion, conclusively prove that 
the Chinese historian really describes the darkness which accompanied the Pas- 
sion of the Son of God. He says that the eclipse took place in the seventh year 
of the reign of the Emperor Kouang-ou-ti. Now, this emperor, who was of the 
dynasty of the Tong Han, or Oriental Han, ascended the throne in the twenty- 
first year of the fortieth cycle. As he had reigned seven years when the pheno- 
menon was observed, twenty-eight years of the cycle had already elapsed. Now, 
this fortieth cycle had commenced in the year 4 of the Christian era ; if we add 
twenty-eight and four we shall obtain thirty-two; so it was in the year 32 of 
Jesus Christ that the phenomenon occurred, and it was in that same year that 
our Saviour died. The Chinese author has even fixed the month and the day. 
and the exactness of his indication is not less surprising. The eclipse took 
place, says he, on the 28th day of the third moon, an epoch which answers to the 
end of March. Now, we know that this was the precise time of the death of 
Jesus Christ. Moreover, even if the author — or rather the authors — of the 
Toung-Kian-Kang-mov had not stated in so precise a manner the day and the 
month, still there could be no possible error; for it is demonstrated, as we have 
already observed, that there was during that year no other eclipse than the 
darkness mentioned by the Evangelists. The authors of the Confitcius Synarum 
Philoxopltn* have consigned to the Tabula Chronologica Monarchies SiniecB, which 
will be found at the end of the work, this particular fact: According to the 
annals of China this eclipse was not expected." 

The reader who may wish to see this interesting demonstration more at 
length and with greater development can pursue it in a volume entitled Foi et 
Lamieres, published at Nancy. It is from the pen of the late M. Aug. Digot, to 
whom redounds the honor of having enriched the Christian apologists with thai 
beautiful demonstration. Too young, alas! was this profound savant, whose 



54 



Twelfth Station. 



constant friendship I had the honor to enjoy, snatched from the world of letters 
and historic lore.* 

THE DERELICTION. 

"And toward the ninth hour Jeeus cried with a loud voice, saying: Eli, Eli 
lamina sabacthani? — that is, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" 
This was the fourth word of Jesus on the cross. " Some that stood there and 
heard said : This Man calleth Elias " (St. Matt, xxvii. 46, 47; St. Mark xv. 34, 35). 

Christ pronounced these words in Syro-Chaldaic ; for at that time the Jews 
did not speak Hebrew, but this dialect. St. Matthew says, Eli, Eli; St. Mark, 
Eloi, Eloi — words resembling Elias. Those, therefore, who believed that He -was 
calling Elias were not Romans, who were perfectly ignorant of who Elias was; 
neither were they Jews from Palestine, who knew the language. Father Lami 
thinks they were Greek Jews who, not understanding Hebrew, imagined that He 
called Elias, a name w T ell known to them. 

The return of Elias, according to the misinterpreted prophecies, was commonly 
expected among the Jews. Many wonder why St. Matthew and St. Mark have 
not employed the same word, Eli or Eloi. It is just as if one said in Latin amasti 
for amavisti. 

As this word is the beginning of the twenty-first Psalm of David, written 
under divine inspiration at the view of the Messias suffering and dying, the 
reader will do well to meditate, if not on the whole of it, at least on the principal 
passages. Here again we have not only the accomplishment of a prophecy, but 
a striking summary of those which concern the sufferings of our Saviour. The 
simple reading of this psalm cannot fail to leave in the soul tender and salutary 
impressions. 

The dereliction of Jesus seems more terrible than His physical agony. He 
appears for the first time as if indeed emptied of His Godhead. Again He was 
as if left alone with the bitterness of the body, drinking the dregs of humanity ; 
for the central fact of Christianity is not the Divinity of a man, but the humanity 
of a God ; not life out of life so much as life out of death ; and its power to sal- 
vation must be sought after not only in the life unquenchable, but also in the 
dark desolation of the body broken and the blood shed. 

It is not given to pass beyond the threshold of that temple of sorrow wherein 
our High-Priest, in those moments of sorrow, entered to plead for His people and 
to offer up Himself as a victim of atonement. Paul rejoiced when his work was 
done and the hour of his dissolution drew nigh ; and the saints, like to men who 
have sojourned in a strange land, hail the close of their earthly journey with up- 
lifted hands. But mysterious horror enshrouds Jesus while He is undergoing His 
passage. He dies as an offender, and His death is an expiation. He has taken 
upon Himself the sins of the whole world, and He has borne the vengeance due 
to them. 

Hut it is only when we contemplate this terrible scene that we can, even 

* Some writers will be surprised, perhaps, that I have not cited, apropos to this miraculous pheno- 
menon, the testimony contained in the writings attributed to St. Denis the Areopagite. According to a 
letter ascribed to him he was witness of this fact in Egypt, and cried out on seeing the prodigy : 
•• Either the world is about to perish or the world's Creator is in sufIerings. ,, The attempts made, 
even in our times, to prove the long disputed authenticity of these beautiful writings have not been 
so successful as that a judicious writer can rely upon them, and the learned are divided in their opin- 
ion on the matter. 



"Why hast Thou forsaken Me?" 



55 



dimly, begin to perceive what sin is. The world does not know, the world will 
never know, what that word means. We are not to be surprised if profound 
theologians hold that it were better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, 
for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions of its inhabitants to wither 
away, as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one venial sin should dare attack 
the sovereign perfection of God, or one lie stand in denial of his eternal law. 
The sacrifice of Jesus is indeed a loud, piercing cry for mercy ; but yet His afflic- 
tion is to be interpreted as a total denial of the right of sin and the most awful 
vindication of the justice of God, who, even while He dispenses mercy, ceases not 
to assert His justice. 

In their prayer-book the Episcopalians have some sentimental verses called 
" Hymn 56," which is a poor parody of a part of the grand Catholic " Litany 
of the Saints." One line of these verses reads : 

" By Thine hour of dark despair! " 

It is simply an atrocious blasphemy invented by Calvin — so rich in the kind — 
a blasphemy more terrible, perhaps, than any of those which Jesus, whom they 
name their Saviour, heard on the cross. 

Our Lord " suffered because He willed it " — OhJatus est quiet Ip.se voluit ! His 
human nature was perfect. He had all the attributes of human nature, will in- 
cluded. But this human nature in Him was united with His divine nature in 
His Divine Person. His human nature did not, and could not, exist for one mo- 
ment separated from His divine nature and His divine Personality. 

Catholic theology tells us what this mystery meant. The agony in the gar- 
den of Gethsemani, and the cry on the cross, tell one and the same story. In 
the garden of Gethsemani the prayer was : " O My Father! if it be possible, let 
this cup pass from me." What cup ? Not, certainly, the suffering for those who 
were to be redeemed by Him and made saints and members of His mystic Body 
for all eternity. For these He was not concerned in His pains, because on their 
account, in the councils of the Godhead, He had willed to become Man, thus to 
suffer for them. For these He rejoiced to suffer. That entreaty in the garden 
of Gethsemani was the foreknowledge of the great multitudes who would reject 
the salvation he had bought for them at so terrible a price. 

So on the cross. The cry : 11 Ut quid dereliquisti Me ? — Why hast thou for- 
saken Me ? " — was but part of the same pleading. They were parts of the same 
stupendous Sacrifice. They are the marvellous showings of the infinite love of 
our Redeemer. They show how incomprehensibly the sufferings of our Lord 
Jesus Christ were increased by the knowledge that His sufferings would prove 
vabieless to such multitudes; more than this, that so many by their perversity 
would render the cross and Passion of our Lord the occasion of their deeper 
damnation. For this it w T as that our Lord cried out on the cross — for human 
nature, while suffering as God in human nature: " Ut quid dereliquisti Me?" — 
" Why hast Thou deprived Me " of gaining those also by my infinite sufferings ? 

To that thirst for souls which tortured His heart, not less than that thirst 
of body which tormented His senses,. Jesus gave solemn expression by these 
words: " Sitio"—! thirst— the fifth w t or d that He pronounced from the pulpit 
of the cross. 

" Afterwards Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the 
Scripture might be fulfilled, said: I thirst. Now there was a vessel set there 



56 Twelfth Station. 

full of vinegar. And they, putting a sponge full of vinegar about hyssop, put 
it to his mouth " (St. John xix. 28, 29). 

" And immediately one of them running took a sponge, and filled it with 
vinegar, and put it on a reed and gave Him to drink/' And the others said : 
%> Stay, let us see whether Elias will come to deliver Him " (St. Mark xv. oG). 

It appears that, according to usage, they prepared in advance the sponge, the 
vinegar, and the reed. The sponge, being porous, absorbed the liquid, which it 
would afterwards give back by suction. They could not, certainly, at that eleva- 
tion reach the lips of Christ with a cup. 

The Reed. — The word calamus, equally Greek and Latin, taken literally, is 
not so much a reed as a stalk or branch of a plant ; we say also calamus, or stalk, 
of wheat, oats, barley, or hyssop. The reed, therefore, was nothing else than a 
stalk of hyssop, at the end of which they presented the sponge to Christ : for if 
the cross was too high for them to reach the mouth of Jesus with a vessel, it was 
not too high for a man, by extending the arm, to reach it with a small rod. In 
Palestine the garden hyssop grows taller than in Europe ; I say <k garden hys- 
sop," for on the walls, ordinarily deficient in moisture, it is short and stunted. 
The branches of the common hyssop 6f France are about twenty-six inches in 
length ; they are hard and woody, and divide into smaller branches furnished 
throughout the whole length with oblong leaves like the lavender. This plant 
is common in southern Europe. By reason of the analogy of asup, the Arabic 
name of the caper-plant, with the Hebrew esdb — hyssop of the Scripture — certain 
interpreters have maintained that the reed might be a stalk of the Gapparis spi~ 
nosa, or caper-plant, which grows in abundance on the mountains surrounding 
Jerusalem. In short, some believe that, instead of the Greek word hussopos, we 
should read huss&s or hussotos, which signifies spear or lance, thus making it 
understood that the Roman soldier stuck the sponge on the point of the lance 
which he held in his hand ; but it is generally a very bad system to suppose faults 
of copyists to have become general, and so to change without scruple the terms 
of Holy Scripture. 

Jesus on the cross has cast His divine glances over the prophecies. Having 
taken the vinegar they presented to Him, He sees that He has accomplished 
them all, even to this last: u They gave Me gall for My food, and in My thirst 
they gave Me vinegar to drink" (Psalms lxviii. 22). The types and figures are 
fulfilled ; the reality has taken the place of the shadows. The work which His 
Father had given Him to do is accomplished : the redemption of man is perfect, 
superabundant. He sees that the justice of His Father is satisfied, that His love 
for Him can go no farther — in Jinem dilexit — and that the malice of His enemies 
has reached its extreme limit. All is consummated, all is achieved, all is finished. 

k ' CoNStTMMATUM est " — the sixth word that Jesus pronounced on the cms?. 

Let us note here a precious acknowledgment by the enemies of Jesus, his per- 
fidious brethren in Israel. The Talmud says that the authority of the Sanhcdrin 
ceased forty years before the ruin of the second temple — that is, precisely at the 
epoch of the Passion of our Lord (Sec. Trad. Sarihedrin, fol. 41, recto ; Aboda 
zara, fol. 8, verso). 

The Gonsummat.um. est, pronounced from the cross by the Arbiter of the world, 
was the decree of the eternal dissolution of that celebrated body, and the sup- 
pression for ever of the Mosaic worship and institutions. 

" And Jesus crying with a loud voice, said; Father, into Thy hands I conv» 



"It is finislied" 



57 



mend My spirit/' "And saying this, and bowing His head, He gave up the 
ghost." 

This second cry uttered by Jesus with a strong voice at the moment of 
breathing His last, when He should have been faint and completely exhausted, 
shows, say the Holy Fathers, that Jesus died — still full of life and vigor — because 
He had voluntarily accepted death, and chose to lay down His life, according to 
His own touching expression. 

Divine Saviour ! by the merits of Thy life, of Thy sufferings, of Thy death, by 
Thine infinite love for the Father and for us, abandon me not at the hour of my 
last combat ; grant that I may die the death of the just — Moriatur anima mea 
nwrte justorum ! Grant that my soul may depart from this world and from its 
prison of clay with this cry of hope on my lips : In manus Tuds, Domine, com- 
mendo spiritum rneum. Redemisti me, Domine Deus veritatis. 

Let us pray here for sinners and for the Church : 

O Jesus ! forbid that the virtue of Thy cross should here expire; permit not 
the omnipotent efficacy of Thy grace to perish, nor allow the infinite price of Thy 
blood to become useless. Pate?' sancti . . . resjnce infaciem Chrixfi Tui. 

Stretch forth Thine arms; manifest Thy power and the greatness of Thy 
mercy, and with Thy kind, paternal hand lead back this flock of poor blind and 
erring sheep. Lead them, O forgiving Father ! to Thy fold, the Church ; bring 
them to Thy sacred bosom. 

Hear us, O Holy Father! not because of our own merits, but by the merits of 
Thy Christ and by His blood ; by the infinite and eternal love thou bearest Him, 
have pity on sinners, have pity on the sorrows of Thy Church. Dost thou love her 
no longer, my God ? Was it not for her Thy Divine Son became incarnate ? O 
cradle of Bethlehem ! O cottage of Nazareth ! Remember, O my God ! Gol- 
gatha and its horrors ! Hospice in faciem Ghridi Tui. 

Regard no longer, O Heavenly Father ! the iniquities of Thy people, but 
Thine own unspeakable love ; consult Thy paternal heart, the bowels of Thine 
infinite mercy ; look upon Thy Son. Is it not of Thee, O Lord! this adorable 
Son has said : God has so loved the world as to give up His only Son ? 

Mercy, therefore, O my God ! — mercy, grace, light, and peace for all Thy chil- 
dren. Respice in faciem Ghristi Tui. 

PRODIGIES AFTER THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 

"And behold the veil of the Temple was rent in two from the top even to the 
bottom, and the earth quaked, and the rocks were rent. And the graves were 
opened; and many bodies of the saints that had slept arose, and coming out of 
the tombs after His resurrection, they came into the holy city and appeared to 
many. 1 ' 

The Witnesses of the Death of Jesus. — A certain celebrated man has said : 
M We must acknowledge that if the death of Socrates is that of a sage, the life 
and death of Jesus are those of a God." Long before the birth of that philoso- 
pher the same truth had been, on Calvary itself, clearly perceived and energeti- 
cally expressed : 

"And the centurion who stood over against Him, seeing that crying out in 
this manner He had given up the gho6t, said : Indeed this was a just man ; in- 
deed this man was the Son of God." 



58 



Twelfth Station. 



"And all the multitude of them that were come together to that sight, and 
saw the things that were done, returned striking their breasts." 

"And all His acquaintance, and the women that had followed Him from 
Galilee ministering unto Him, stood afar off beholding these things." 

"Among them was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the Less 
and of Joseph, and Salome, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee." 

The Veil of the Temple is Rent. — Supported here by the Prophet Amos, 
Tertullian says : " The veil of the Temple was torn by the departure of the angel, 
who abandoned the daughter of Sion as the hut after the season of fruits, as the 
cabin in a field of melons." 

St. Matthew reports that this veil, which separated the Holy of Holies from 
the sanctuary of the priests, was rent from the top to the bottom, and divided 
in two, at the moment of the death of Christ ; but St. Jerome remarks that in the 
Gospel according to the Hebrews, or the Nazarenes, we read that the cincture 
of the door of the Sanctum Sanctorum was at that moment broken in two. St. 
Matthew is exact on this point, but incomplete. A holy soul, favored with 
numerous particular revelations, thus harmonizes the Gospel and tradition : 
"The two great pillars situated at the entrance of the sanctuary of the Temple, 
and between which was suspended a magnificent curtain, were separated from 
each other ; the lintel which they supported was broken, and fell ; the curtain was 
rent with noise and violence through its whole length, and the sanctuary was 
thrown open to the eyes of all" (Catherine Emmerich, Passion, cb. xlvi.) 

It was then that in that holy enclosure, hitherto so sacred, was heard that ter- 
rible voice mentioned in Josephus and Tacitus, re-echoing in the precincts of the 
Temple : " Let us go out from here, let us go out from here" — Migremus hinc. 
The doom of the Jewish nation was sealed in the bloody drama of Calvary. The 
rent veil of the sanctuary indicates the end of the Mosaic dispensation and the 
completion of the purposes for which the descendants of Abraham had hitherto 
been preserved as a nation. The light of Israel went out in that darkness which 
overspread the world when the dying Saviour cried : It is finished. 

The Earth Trembled. — According to historians this earthquake extended 
not only through the land of Chauaan, but throughout the immense extent of the 
Roman Empire. Hear what the historian Paul Orosius, who flourished in the be- 
ginning of the fifth century, says of it : "In the XVII. year (XVIII.?) of Tibe- 
rius, our Lord Jesus Christ having voluntarily delivered himself into the hands 
of the impious Jews and to the dolors of His Passion, and having been fastened 
to the gibbet of the cross, there took place in the world a very great earth- 
quake; the rocks were broken in the mountains, and many great cities were al- 
most entirely ruined by this extraordinary commotion. . . . All this " — adds 
Orosius, who had the happiness of being a Christian — "rests not only on the 
faith of the holy Gospels, but on the testimony of many pagan authors " (Hist., 1. 
vii. ch. iv.) 

We also read in Tacitus {Ann., L ii.) : " That same year twelve considerable 
cities of Asia were destroyed, in the middle of the night, by an earthquake — a 
calamity so much the more terrible as it was unexpected. The people were de- 
prived of the ordinary resource in like cases — that of flying to the fields — for the 
ground, opening on all sides, offered only frightful abysses. It is reported that 
high mountains sank down, that others rose up in the plains, and that flames 
issued from the midst of the ruins. Sardis, the most ill-fated of these cities, re- 



ALLEY WAY LEADING TO HEROD'S PALACE 
From, so icth. \o north „ 



Prodigies after the Death of Christ. 



59 



ceived also in her distress the greatest solace ; Magnesia of Sipylus, Temenos, 
Philadelphia, Egeria, Apollonis, Mortenne, Hyracria — the Macedonian Hiero- 
caesarea — Imolus Myrinus, Cyme." 

Pliny also speaks of the same catastrophe in these terms: "The greatest 
earthquake of which men have kept the remembrance was that which took 
place in the reign of Tiberius, which in a single night ruined twelve cities of 
Asia." Suetonius and Strabo (1. xii.) attest also the same fact. 

The circumstance mentioned by the above authors — that this terrible commo- 
tion happened in one night — warrants us in believing this catastrophe to be the 
second earthquake, which took place (St. Matt, xxviii. 2) during the night of 
the Resurrection, rather than that which took place at the moment of the death 
of Christ. 

We may believe that these terrible commotions of the earth were the accom- 
plishment of so many prophecies related in the Old Testament, especially those 
of Amos and Aggeus. The latter expresses himself in these words : " For thus 
saith the Lord of hosts: Yet one little while and I will move the heaven, and the 
earth, and the sea, and the dry land. . . . And the word of the Lord came a 
second time to Aggeus in the four and twentieth day of the month, saying : Speak 
to Zorobabel, the governor of Juda, saying : I will move both heaven and earth " 
(ii. 7 et seq.) 

Let us observe that Eusebius, in his Chronicle, mentions one city more than 
Pliny and Tacitus, making the number of cities destroyed amount to thirteen, as 
is shown by the following citation from this celebrated ecclesiastical historian: 

"The sun being eclipsed, darkness covered the earth; Bithynia was agitated 
by an earthquake, and many monuments were overthrown in the city of Nice. 
All these things were in accordance w T ith what took place at the death of Jesus 
Christ. Now, Phlegon, the able calculator of the Olympiads, has written as fol- 
lows on these events . . ." (Chron., 6d. Etienne, fol. 84). We have already given 
the testimony of Phlegon. 

Not only does Syncellus (p. 322), the valued chronographer, who flourished 
at the end of the eighth century, confirm the account of Phlegon, which he 
inserts entire in his text, but he adds to it two important citations, one from 
Thallus, which we have already given, and another from Julius Africanus. The 
latter author nourished at the end of the second and the beginning of the third 
century of the Church, and w 7 as almost contemporaneous with the immediate dis- 
ciples of the apostles. This savant, therefore, so enlightened and so conscientious, 
had authority to say to the pagans: "All the particular acts accomplished by Je- 
sus Christ— the curing of souls and bodies, His preaching, the raising of the dead 
to life, and all the secrets revealed to His apostles and disciples — have been re- 
counted to us by the ancients, particularly the darkness which overspread the whole 
earth, and the rending of the rocks by an earthquake in such a manner that — not 
only in Judea, but in many other regions of the world, numerous monuments 
were levelled to the ground. 

We have a double interest in giving our attention to the manner in which lie 
cites Thallus in refuting him : " In the third book of his history he says that 
this darkness was the effect of an eclipse ; but he is mistaken, since the Jews 
kept their pasch on the fourteenth day of the moon ; this planet is then on the 
side opposite the earth, and an eclipse of the sun can happen only at new moon. 
Be it so, nevertheless; I grant that he convinces the incredulous, and that he 



60 



Twelfth Station. 



consider* as a prodigy this grand eclipse only by the effect it has produced on 
the vision. We know also that Phlegon recounts that under the empire of Tibe- 
rius Caesar there was a total eclipse of the sun while the moon, on the opposite 
side, was shining in all her brightness. Can it be doubted that this was the 
eclipse with which we are occupied? But now let us ask what was the cause 
of this extraordinary coincidence of an eclipse with an earthquake— the rending 
of rocks with the derangement of all the elements of nature? No age from the 
remotest period of antiquity has ever transmitted the memory of like events. Tt 
must, therefore, be admitted that the cause of these prodigies was the death of 
the Master of nature.'" 

Thus does the learned historian of Nicopolis show us all men of his day pre- 
occupied wit h the wonders performed at the death of Jesus Christ, even without 
indicating that they are to be found in the Gospels. This passage of Africanus 
is very important, and yet but little quoted. 

If men would only give the same attention to things divine that they give to 
those of earth, and meditate on the holy places and on the events which were 
there accomplished, we do not think they could pass one hour upon Calvary 
without crying out with the centurion and the soldiers who guarded Jesus: 
" This Man is truly the Son of God ! " 

" Et j>etrce scissce sunt" — And the rocks were rent. The rending of rocks is a 
natural consequence of an earthquake such as that which we have just described. 
The effect is either to cause the disappearance of rocks and mountains, as we 
have seen in the text of Tacitus, or to break them into colossal pieces, as we see 
especially in mountains of volcanic formation. We have spoken of one of these 
effects, which is still to be seen on Calvary, and which has been seen there in all 
times since the crucifixion of our Saviour. 

Not far from the place where the cross was erected — that is to say, at the very 
extremity of the present altar, to the right, and at about fifteen inches above the 
ground — may be observed the fissure that was made in the rock at the moment 
when Jesus expired. This prodigy, which is visible and striking, speaks clearly 
to all eyes. A movable plate of silver about four and a half inches w T ide covers 
the rent. This fissure is large enough for on,e to put in the hand, and is very 
deep, descending at least fifteen feet. Although the pavement of marble almost 
entirely conceals it, it is known to extend over all the rocks of Calvary, which 
it cuts diagonally into two nearly equal parts, the two sides of which correspond 
exactly with each other; and yet it makes such complicated turnings that it 
would be impossible for art to simulate it by means of any instrument. 

Maundrell, a Protestant, a man of known veracity, says : u About one yard 
and a half distant from the hole in which the foot of the cross was fixed is seen 
that memorable cleft in the rock said to have been made by the earthquake 
which happened at the suffering of the God of nature, when (as St. Matthew 
witnesseth) 1 the rocks were rent and the very graves were opened.' This cleft, 
as to what now appears of it, is about a span wide at its upper part, and two 
deep, after which it closes; but it opens again below, as you may see in another 
chapel contiguous to the side of Calvary, and runs down to an unknown depth 
in the earth. That this rent was made by the earthquake that happened at our 
Lord's Passion there is only tradition to prove; but that it is a natural and 
genuine breach, and not counterfeited by any art, the sense and reason of every 
one who sees it may convince him ; for the sides of it fit like two tallies to each 



"The Rocks were rent" 



61 



other, and yet it runs to such intricate windings as cannot well be counterfeited 
by art nqr arrived at by any instruments." 

Many English travellers — Miller, Fleming, Schawet — speak of it in the same 
sense. I will cite only the following passage, which we find in Addison : " A 
very estimable English gentleman, a Protestant, who was travelling in Palestine, 
assured me that his fellow-traveller, an intelligent deist, sought on the way to 
turn into ridicule the recitals which the Catholic priests were making to them 
on the sacred places. It was in these dispositions that he went to visit the rent 
in the rock which they showed him on Mount Calvary as the effect of the 
earthquake that happened at the death of Christ, and which is now to be seen 
enclosed within the vast dome constructed by the Emperor Constantine. But 
when he came to examine these apertures with the exactitude and attention of 
a naturalist he said to his friend : ' Ioegin to he a Christian. I have made,' he 
continued, ' long studies in physics and mathematics, and I am assured that the 
ruptures of the rock have not been produced by an ordinary and natural earth- 
quake. Such a shock would, no doubt, have separated the different beds of 
which the mass is composed, but only by following the veins which distinguish 
them, and destroying their cohesion in the weakest parts. I have observed that 
it is so in the rocks uplifted by earthquakes, and reason teaches me nothing 
unconformable to this. Here it is altogether different : the rock is parted 
transversely, and the rupture crosses the veins in a strange and supernatural 
fashion. I see, then, clearly and demonstratively, that it is the pure effect of a 
miracle which neither art nor nature could produce. This is why,' he added, ' I 
render thanks to God for having conducted me hither to contemplate this inonu-? 
ment of His marvellous power — a monument which places in the light of day the 
divinity of Jesus Christ.' " * 

I will content myself with adding : 1st, that it is most evident this rent was 
never made by the hand of man; 2d, that it nowise resembles the ordinary 
fractures of rocks ; 3d, that it is at least very surprising that a phenomenon of 
this kind should be found precisely on that spot where we know so many other 
prodigies were effected, and where faith is authorized to seek it. 

The reader will be curious to know on this same point the most ancient tes- 
timony preserved to us by tradition. In the middle of the fourth century, while 
instructing his catechumens on the proofs of our faith, St. Cyril of Jerusalem 
said to them (Catech., xiii. 39): "This sacred Golgotha, which here rears its 
lofty head, still exhibits to our view the rocks that w T ere rent at the death of 
Christ. . . ." No one can fail to comprehend the force of these words. The 
illustrious patriarch was preaching in his cathedral, in the Church of the Resur- 
rection, newly erected by Constantine on the tomb of Christ ; here could lie 
justly say, for his auditors saw through the windows of the church " this sacred 
rock " of Calvary. A testimony so solemn is assuredly of irrefragable authority. 

But we have another testimony, very curious and more ancient still, transmit- 
ted to us by Rufinus, contemporary of St. Jerome, in his Ecclesiastical History 
(1. ix. ch. vi.) He makes St. Lucian speak thus to the prefect, his judge, accord- 
ing to the acts of his martyrdom : " If you hesitate to yield to the proofs I have 
'ust given, I will produce for testimony the very place itself where the things 
took place. You will find at Jerusalem the rocks of Moun t Gohjotha si ill hrokxn 

* See this rent on the plan of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, not as it really is, since il cannol 
be seen in its full extent, but such as vvc may suppose it. to judge by ils I wo visible points. 



62 



Twelfth Station. 



under the weight of the gibbet." St. Lucian was martyred in the year 311 or 312 
under the Emperor Maximin. We must conclude from these words that the 
mountain was opened at the very place where the cross was planted. And it is 
this fissure that is still shown to pilgrims. 

These two last testimonies offer to modern Protestants a new proof of the 
authenticity of Calvary. We did not cite them in treating of that subject, for 
their natural place is here. Those who have denied that Calvary was a mountain 
or eminence will find their allegation confounded by these words of St. Cyril : 
" This sacred Golgotha, which here rears its lofty head." And how would it be 
sacred, if not by the death of Christ ? And St. Lucian does not say, You will find 
this rock near Jerusalem, but at Jerusalem, in Jerusalem. Those, therefore, to 
say the least, only lose their time who would find it either at the north of Jeru- 
salem or on any one of the rocks projecting from the foot of Olivet. 

He Descended into Hell. — Jesus on the cross saw and declared that His 
work was done : "It is consummated." Now the works of God by His Christ 
commence. By His Christ and the infinite virtue of His immolation He is 
about to banish the prince of the world and destroy his empire. He is about to 
break open the gates of hell, to snatch from the strong-armed His precious spoils, 
and to lead from his subterranean prisons the souls of the patriarchs, of the pro- 
phets, and of all the just whom he had held in captivity from the beginning of 
the world. They have seen the blessed soul of the Redeemer, and they have 
rejoiced with a joy of which no mortal mind can conceive here below. Three 
days yet — they know it — and they shall see Him in His sacred body, which gvoes 
life to the world. They will accompany Him in His triumph, to be presented by 
Him to His Father and theirs as the first-fruits of His victories. 

He descended into hell. This is what was prophesied nearly two hundred 
years before by Jesus of Jerusalem, son of Sirach. The Eternal Wisdom, by this 
inspired writer in his book of Ecclesiasticus (xxiv. 45), says : " I will penetrate 
to all the lower parts of the earth, and will behold all that sleep, and will en- 
lighten all that hope in the Lord." And this is what the apostle of nations 
assures us when he says (Eph. iv. 9) : " Now that He ascended, what is it but 
because He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth ? " Which de- 
claration cannot signify into the grave only, especially since in that which we 
look upon as the Apostles' Creed we first profess to believe that He was buried, 
and, besides, that He descended into hell. 

This is also what the Prince of the Apostles declares to us by the fol- 
lowing words (1 Pet. iii. 18-20) : ''Christ died once for our sins, the just for 
the unjust : that He might offer us to God, being put to death indeed in the flesh, 
but brought to life by the spirit. In which also coming He preached to those 
spirits who were in prison, who in time past had been incredulous when they 
waited for the patience of God in the days of Noe. . . ." 

He preached to those spirits that were in prison. The true and common inter- 
pretation of this passage seems to be that the soul of Christ, after the separation 
from the body and before the resurrection, descended to a place in the interior 
parts of the earth called hell in that which we call the Apostles' Creed — some- 
times called Abraham's bosom, sometimes the Limbo of the Fathers; a place 
where were detained all the souls of the patriarchs, prophets, and just men, as it 
were, in prison — i.e., He brought them the happy news that He who was their 
Redeemer was now come to be their deliverer, and that at His glorious ascension 



"He descended into Hell." 



63 



they should enter with Him into heaven, where none could enter before our Ee- 
deenier, who byJElis death opened the gates of heaven. Among these were many 
who had been incredulous in the time of Noe, and who would not take warning 
from his preparing and building the ark; but it may be reasonably supposed that 
many of them repented of their sins when they saw the danger approaching, and 
before they perished by the waters of the deluge, so that they died at least not 
doomed to eternal damnation ; because, though they were sinners, yet they wor- 
shipped the true God, for we do not find any proofs of idolatry before the 
deluge. These, then, and all the souls of the just, Christ descended to free 
from their captivity, from their prison, and to lead them at his ascension tri- 
umphant with Him into heaven. The Church of England cannot quarrel with 
this exposition, which seems altogether conformable to the third of their Thirty- 
nine Articles, which at present runs thus: "As Christ died for us, and was 
buried, so also it is to be believed that He w r ent down into hell." It is thus ex- 
pressed in the articles framed under Queen Elizabeth in 1562; and in the articles 
promulgated ten years before, in 1552, in the fourth year of Edward VI., the 
words were : "That the body of Christ lay in the grave until His resurrection, 
but the spirit which He gave up was with the spirits which were detained in 
prison, or in hell, and preached to them, as the place in St. Peter testifieth." 
Dr. Pearson writes thus on the fifth article of the Creed : " There is nothing the 
Fathers agree in more than as to a local and real descent of the soul of Christ into 
the infernal parts, unto the habitation of the souls departed. . . . This was 
the general opinion of the Church, as may appear by the testimony of those an- 
cient writers who lived successively and wrote in several ages, and delivered this 
exposition in such express terms as are not capable of any other interpretation." 
He cites the Fathers (see edit. an. 16.83, p. 237 — "Prison"). See here also a 
proof of a third place or middle state of souls; for these spirits in prison to whom 
Christ went to preach after His death were not in heaven, nor yet in the hell of 
the damned, because heaven is no prison and Christ did not go to preach to the 
damned. St. Augustine, in his ninety-ninth epistle, confesses that this text is 
replete with difficulties. This, however, he declares is clear beyond all doubt : 
that Jesus Christ descended in soul after His death into the regions below ; and 
he concludes with these words : " Who but an infidel will deny that Christ went 
into hell ? " In their hell and their Elysian Fields, both places subterranean, we 
find among pagans one of the best preserved of the primitive traditions. 

By virtue of His death the soul of our Saviour brought back to life many of 
the just, and sent them to Jerusalem to procure the salvation of many Israelites 
and to prepare for the successful preaching of the apostles. This is what we read 
in St. Matthew (xxvii. 52, 53) : " The graves were opened : and many bodies of 
the saints that had slept arose. And coming out of the tombs after His resurrec- 
tion, came into the holy city and appeared to many." 

Other Prodigies at the Death op Christ.— Apparently the evangelists 
have told us but little of the prodigies which occurred on that day. The rabbis 
have preserved some of them, copied evidently from the Gospels. "Forty years 
before the destruction of the sanctuary," says the Talmud of Jerusalem, "the 
light of the golden candlestick which was in the Holy of Holies, near the table 
of the bread of proposition, suddenly went out. The lot which each year, at the 
Feast of Expiations, was cast on the two emissary goats, and that decided which 
one was to be driven out into the desert, always from that moment fell on the 



64 



Twelfth Station. 



goat at the left of the high -priest, while heretofore, and especially during the 
pontificate of Simon the Just, which lasted forty years, the lot always fell on the 
goat at his right. From that moment also the scarlet ribbon, attached sometimes 
to the horns of the goat, sometimes to the door of the Temple, was no longer seen 
to blanch, whilst before its red color became suddenly as white as snow before 
the eyes of all." This was a sign that the sins of the people were not blotted 
out, and that God was no longer propitious, for red is symbolic of sin among all 
ancient peoples. It is for this that Esau, in the Old Testament, and Typhon and 
Mars in mythology, are called red. It was for this also that a red cow was to be 
burned for the purification of Israel. In vain does the high-priest confess his 
sins and those of the people over the goat to be immolated ; his confession is not 
accepted ; the red ribbon no longer becomes white, since the people themselves 
demanded that the blood of the Just One should fall upon them and upon their 
children. 

On the day following the crucifixion the door of Nicanor, before which Jesus 
in His infancy was presented in the Temple, was found wide open without hav- 
ing been unclosed by any person, which to all appeared a certain presage of 
the calamities to come upon the city and the Temple. The historian Josephus 
also makes mention of this event, but, unlike the Talmud, which in this respect 
is more sincere than he, without indicating the precise date. He recounts that 
the door which at that time opened of itself was the eastern gate of the interior 
sanctuary, which was of bronze and so heavy that it took twenty men to open or 
close it — a circumstance which renders this fact still more extraordinary. The 
Gospel of the Hebrews records, moreover, that the upper sill of the Temple was 
of enormous dimensions, as St. Jerome reminds his contemporaries. u At that 
time," continues the Talmud, "the Rabbi John, son of Zacheus " (the John of 
the Acts of the Apostles), " at the sight of this fearful prodigy, cried out : 'O 
Temple! O Temple ! why art thou thus troubled? Alas! the fate that awaits 
thee is but too well known to us.' Zacharias, son of Joiada, predicted it in these 
words : ' Lebanon, open thy gates that fire may consume thy cedars.' " All these 
things were, in effect, a certain presage that henceforth Judaism should no longer 
exist; for by the series of events which then came to pass, from that reprobation 
of the Temple where hitherto the glory of God had abided, the Sanhedrim, as 
the Talmudists distinctly remark, quitted for ever the hall called Gazitz, and 
from that moment the law was abrogated, since the judges in Israel lost irre- 
trievably the right of judging according to their own laws. 

At that solemn announcement of the end of their jurisdiction, just as when, 
forty years later, the Mosaic sacrifices suddenly came to an end, the people were 
seized with terror. They covered themselves with sackcloth and ashes, and toie 
their hair, crying : " Woe to us ! for the sceptre has departed from Israel, and j et 
the Messias is not come." All these things are recorded by the Jews themselves. 
The liabbi Sadoc, when they announced to him that the gates of the Temple had 
opened of themselves and that the abomination of desolation had entered into 
the sanctuary, commenced to fast and do rigorous penance, in order to avert the 
calamities that threatened his nation. He lived in this austerity for forty years, 
insomuch that he became a living skeleton and was called by the people "the in- 
valid." But when the judgments he had foreseen were thundered upon Jerusalem, 
and he saw that all his penance had been in vain, he resigned himself to the fate 
of his country, and put himself into the hands of the physicians of Titus, with 



The Centurion. 65 

whom his extreme weakness made him find favor, to be healed from the effects 
of his excessive fasting. All these things are recorded in the treatise of the Tal- 
mud entitled "Taanith.'' The rabbis record that Titus entered into the Temple 
during the conflagration which consumed it, and tore the curtain of the Holy of 
Holies, saying : " If thou art the true God, come and fight against me." 

The Centurion. — It is well known, as we read in Justus Lipsius, Creuzer, 
Lydius (p. 286, 287, etc.), that according to the Roman custom a centurion (or 
commander of one hundred soldiers) was always appointed to preside at exe- 
cutions. 

In the midst of the imprecations of the Jews, the centurion w^hom Pilate had 
commanded to be present at the death of the Saviour — struck, without doubt, 
at the sight of His divine patience, the majesty of His death, and the shining- 
miracles with which it was accompanied — exclaimed : " This is truly the Son of 
God!'''' He disdained to be sullied w T ith the falsehoods into which the chief 
priests had bribed the soldiers of Pilate ; and wishing to belong entirely to 
Christ, he removed his belt or insignia of command, and became, with two sol- 
diers, converted like him at the sight of so many prodigies, a preacher of the 
Gospel. In short, having quitted Jerusalem, he w r ent with them to evangelize 
Cappadocia, of which country he became the apostle, as Thomas of India, Peter 
at Rome, John in Asia, and Paul at Jerusalem and in Illyria. 

The wicked Jews, furious with anger, induced Pilate to calumniate Longi- 
nus to the emperor in a letter containing money, which they addressed to Rome. 
Pilate accordingly sent men to arrest him. The soldiers having cautiously sur- 
rounded his house, one of them hastily entered, and, not knowing him, asked 
the centurion himself, Where is Longinus ? Happy at the near approach of his 
martyrdom, he gives the soldiers a splendid reception, makes them dine at his 
own table, and, the repast being over, asks what they desire. Having bound 
him by oath not to speak of what they were about to confide to him, they told 
him they had come, by the order of Caesar, to apprehend Longinus and the two 
soldiers, his companions. Three days after he apprised the two soldiers, and 
having conducted the men who had come to take him into a field, he said to 
them : " Here we are whom you seek — Longinus and his two companions. 
Execute us." But his hosts, shocked at the hideousness of repaying with death 
the hospitality they had received, preferred to offer to Pilate their own heads. 
Longinus, however, caused them to decide, ordered a white robe as for a festi- 
val, and was beheaded. The lictors bore the head to Pilate, who, having shown 
it to the Jews, had it placed outside the gate of the city, where it remained free 
from corruption. 

A widow who had been blind came to venerate it, hoping thereby to obtain 
her sight. She recovered her sight indeed ; but her son in his turn became blind, 
and was. finally taken from her by death. St. Longinus, to console this deso- 
late mother, appeared to her in her sleep and tdld her that her son was in celes- 
tial glory, and that he would never leave her side. So relate the Bollandists, 
according to a manuscript of the Vatican. 

St. Longinus has a chapel in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, the site of 
which may be seen in the plan we have given elsewhere. 



Abaorpta est mors in victoria sua. Ubi cat, mors, victoria tua ; vbi est, mors, si'nn- 
Jus tuus ? In the blood and the death of Jesus Christ the Christian soul finds all 



66 Twelfth Station. 

m 

good : in His death, life ; in His blood, purification from all sin and a sure pledge 
of all the good we are to expect for eternity ; the solid foundation of our sweet, 
our sublime hope, an infallible remedy against all the evils of our nature so 
deeply fallen, against the greatest and most inevitable of all, which is death. 
This is what the prophet Isaias predicted in these words (xxv. 8) : ATwbcbit 
mortem in sempiternum, etc. — " He shall cast death down headlong for ever; and 
the Lord God shall wipe away tears from every face, and the reproach of His 
people He shall take away from off the whole earth : for the Lord hath spoken it." 

What are we to understand by the victory of death, if not that universal 
dominion it has acquired by sin over all the members of the human race, and 
which it has exercised over the First-born of our brethren, who, having never 
known sin, was for it the only remedy, being no other than Life itself, substan- 
tial, increated, infinite. If the princes of the world had known the King of 
Glory they would never have crucified Him ; but being deceived by His hu- 
mility and patience, and still more by the inscrutable designs of God, who 
delivered to them His only Son, they believed that they only satisfied their ha- 
tred and envy against a just man whom they confounded with so many others. 
They hoped to devour Him alive, but without believing that He was the Life. 
They pretended to put Him to death, but without knowing that it was by this 
very means death itself was to be conquered, and that the power of him who 
was the prince of death should be destroyed. 

" He has cast death down headlong for ever." Since that victory death is 
no more than a sleep, or rather it is a passage from a life where all is tears and 
sorrows to one where is found all good. Those who die close their eyes for a 
moment to the light of the sun to open them instantly in eternal day. They are 
no longer affrighted, as were the ancients, by the long sojourn in darkness by 
which death was formerly followed. They regard it as their liberty and as an 
enfranchisement from the ties that detained them in exile. And they count with 
so much certainty on the future resurrection which shall draw their bodies from 
the tomb, that, in advance, they laugh at and defy Death even to his face, ask- 
ing him in scorn where are his victory and his sting, and reminding him that 
their Saviour has disarmed him for Himself and for them ; that He has swallowed 
him up, and that by the plenitude of His life He has absorbed and annihilated 
him for ever. " He has swallowed up death in order that we might become the 
inheritors of eternal life." 

THE BREAKING OF THE THIEVES' LEGS AND THE PIERCING OF 
OUR SAVIOUR'S SIDE. 

We place here, between the Twelfth and Thirteenth Stations, the interme- 
diate incidents mentioned by the Scripture. Here they are, as concordance pre- 
sents them to us : 

" Then the Jews (because it was the parasceve), that the bodies might not 
remain upon the cross on the Sabbath-day (for that was a great Sabbath-day), 
besought Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken 
away. 

u The soldiers therefore came : and they broke the legs of the first, and of the 
other that was crucified with Him. 

"But after they were come to Jesus, when # they saw that He was already 
dead, they did not break his legs. 



T7ie Crurifragium. 



67 



" But one of the soldiers with a spear opened His side, and immediately there 
came out blood and water. 

" And he that saw it hath given testimony; and his testimony is true, And 
he knoweth that he saith true ; that you also may believe. 

" For these things were done that the Scripture might be fulfilled: You shall 
not break a bone of Him. 

u And again another Scripture which saith : They shall look on Him whom 
they pierced." 

Because it was the parasceve. It was the preparation, during which the Jews 
used to prepare the food that could not legally be cooked on the Sabbath-day. 
Bodies were not to remain on the cross on that holy day, for their prolonged pre- 
sence there would defile the holy land. We read in Deuteronomy (xxi. 22, 23) : 
" When a man hath committed a crime for which he is to be punished with 
death, and being condemned to die, is hanged on a gibbet : his body shall not 
remain upon the tree, but shall be buried the same day ; and thou shalt not defile 
the land which the Lord thy God shall give thee in possession." Josephus says 
that in his time the Jews still religiously observed this law. 

The coming Sabbath was one of importance; it coincided with the great day 
of the Azyrnes, the solemn day of the departure of the Israelites from Egypt, the 
land of their long captivity. The law of Deuteronomy concerned only those 
who had committed great crimes, such as blasphemy and idolatry. No prayers 
were to be offered for them in the synagogues, as they were for all others during 
the eleven months which succeeded their death. They should not be remembered 
before God, and even their bodies, not to defile the land, should disappear from 
the sight of men before the setting of the sun. 

Assuredly, this disposition of the law in nowise concerned Jesus Christ : 1st, 
because He was the infinite Sanctity, and His body, even separated from His 
soul by death, remained united to the Divinity and was in very deed the body of 
a God ; 2d, because that law had been entirely abrogated and destroyed by His 
death ; 3d, because, as the text itself expresses it, it could not concern innocent 
men unjustly condemned. 

Let us hear Tertullian develop this thought: "You refuse," says he to the 
Jews, " to believe in the Passion and death of Jesus because, you say, it has not 
been predicted that the Christ should die on the cross. Besides, how believe, 
you add, that God would deliver to a death so shameful His eternal Son when 
He Himself had said: He that Tiangeth from the tree is accursed of God? The ex- 
amination of the fact [of the innocence of Jesus] should here precede the sense 
of that malediction. The Lord had said in Deuteronomy : ' When a man hath 
committed a crime for which he is to be punished with death, and being con- 
demned to die, is hanged on a gibbet: his body shall not remain upon the tree, 
but shall be buried the same day, for he is accursed of God that hangeth on the 
tree: and thou shalt not defile thy land which the Lord thy God shall give thee 
in possession.' Hence His Father, far from making Jesus Christ the object of 
His malediction in that kind of death, made this distinction — that when a man 
hath committed a crime worthy of death, and, being condemned to die, is hanged 
on a gibbet, he is accursed of God because he was hanged from the tree in pun- 
ishment of his crimes. But Jesus Christ, whose blessed lips were never for a 
moment sullied with the least shadow of falsehood and who was a perfect model 
of justice and humility, was not delivered to that kind of death as a chastise- 



68 



Twelfth Station. 



ment for His iniquities, as we have shown above, but to accomplish the predic- 
tions of the prophets by which you were designated as the instruments of His 
death ; witness also what the Spirit of Christ chanted by anticipation in the 
Psalms: 1 They have rendered Me evil for .good. I have paid what I did not 
owe. They have pierced My hands and My feet. They gave Me gall for My 
food, and in My thirst they gave Me vinegar to drink. Upon My vesture they 
have cast lots'; and, in fine, the thousand outrages with which it was predicted 
you would overwhelm Him. He endured, therefore, all these indignities, not for 
auy deed committed by Himself, but to fulfil the Scriptures coming from the 
mouth of the prophets. Hence the prediction must needs describe the mystery 
of the Passion. The more it was opposed to human reason the more would it 
excite scandal if undisguisedly announced ; the more it was magnificent, the 
more it was necessary to enshroud it in holy darkness, in order that the difficulty 
to understand it might oblige men to have recourse to the grace of God. This is 
why Isaac, conducted of old by his father as a victim and carrying the wood for 
his immolation, prefigures Jesus Christ, a victim abandoned by His Father and 
bearing the wood of His Passion " (Contr. Jvd., x.) 

Finally, we will say with St. Paul (Gal. iii. 13) : " Christ has redeemed us 
from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us : for it is written : Cursed 
is every one that hangeth on the tree." So our ever-blessed Saviour, willing to 
appear in the character of one accursed, has procured for us all blessings. 

For the Jews to make such a request of Pilate, it required on their part the 
highest degree of cruelty, obduracy, and audacity, if one reflects upon the awful 
miracles that had taken place — one proof among a thousand that miracles with- 
out grace work no conversions. The fact that the light of the sun reappeared 
immediately after the death of Jesus, that the earthquake also appeared to have 
ceased, and, above all, that Jesus was visibly dead, was sufficient to restore the 
satanic courage of the Jews. Finally, in hatred united with fanaticism there are 
mysteries of crime which man, sinner though he be, can never penetrate or com- 
prehend. They hate Jesus even after His death; and that hatred will pass to 
their children for generations, as in the hearts of Christians His love will be 
transmitted from age to age unto eternity. They wished, therefore, that Pilate 
should give orders for new torments by commanding the legs of the crucified to 
be broken. Pilate accedes once more to their demands; charged with this final 
execution, four soldiers are sent armed with large iron hammers. " They broke 
the legs of the first, and of the other that was crucified with Him. But after they 
were come to Jesus, when they saw that He was already dead, they did not break 
His legs. But one of the soldiers with a spear opened His side, and immediately 
there came out blood and water." 

The crwrifragium, or breaking of the legs and thighs, was a torment distinct 
from the crucifixion — the one not entailing the other. Profane history furnishes 
numerous proofs of it. "Augustus," writes Suetonius, " having discovered that 
Thallus, his secretary, had delivered a letter and received for it five hundred 
denarii, caused his legs and thighs to be broken " (In Any., ch. lxviii.) In Seneca 
we see Sylla treat in the same manner Marcus Marius Gratidianus (Deim, iii. 18). 

But the crurifragium was not peculiar to the Romans. This mode of punish- 
ment was practised among other nations of antiquity. Polybius reports that in 
Africa a rebel tribe, having captured some of the most illustrious citizens of Car- 
thage, mutilated them, broke their legs, and cast them alive into a pit (Hist., 1. i.) 



Our Saviour's Side is Pierced. 



69 



The reader who may desire further information on this kind of punishment can 
consult Justus Lipsius, 1. ii. ch. xiv. and 1. iii. ch. xiv. 

It is well known that the same torture was largely employed against the mar- 
tyrs. Among many others the acts of St. Adrian offer an example, giving us an 
idea of the cruelty of the imperial tyrants and the constancy of the confessors 
of the faith. 

All these facts show the breaking of the legs without crucifixion, and many 
others we could cite show crucifixion unaccompanied by the breaking of the legs. 
So far were the ancients from desiring the speedy death of the crucified that they 
left them in torments on the cross as long as possible, it being the object of 
the legislator to aggravate their sufferings and to prolong the lesson of terror 
given by this punishment. It was only on the anniversary of the birth of the 
prince, at the request of their relations, or for some other grave reason, say the 
ancient jurisconsults, Paul and Ulpian, that their death was accelerated; on 
other occasions they were left to rot on the gibbet, where their flesh became the 
food of vultures. 

Crurifragium was no more the necessary consequence of crucifixion among the 
Jews than among pagan nations. In no place can be found the least indication 
to this effect. The text of Deuteronomy which regulates the punishment of the 
cross makes no mention of it. The law ordained that the body of the crucified 
be removed before the close of the day ; but it said nothing about making the 
criminal die before that hour. Was it, at least, customary to recur to this bar- 
barous means ? Nothing, absolutely nothing, authorizes us to think so. The 
very contrary seems to result clearly from the evangelical text. Hear Origen, 
living so near the time of our Lord, and so well instructed in the usages of the 
East : On these words of St. John, " Then the Jews besought Pilate that their 
legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away," he says : " This event 
took place on the day of the Saviour's death. But in ordering their legs to be 
broken Pilate was not guided by custom. The apostle makes it well understood 
when he writes that they besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and 
that they might be taken down from the cross. What was the use of soliciting 
as a favor that which was already the custom ? " (Tract xxxv., in Matt.) 

In demanding this cruel torment the Jews acted even contrary to the usage 
of the times, which was to give to the sufferer whose death they wished to ac- 
celerate a stroke with a lance under the armpits in the region of the heart, this 
being a less barbarous manner of putting an end to his life. We owe this de- 
tail to Origen, who, living during the persecutions, knew better than many 
others the details of capital punishments. 

Hence the surprise of Pilate on hearing of the speedy death of our Lord. 
On the one hand, probably to please the Jews, he had given no orders that the 
Saviour should receive the ordinary stroke of the lance; on the other, he knew 
that the crucified often lived not only a few hours but even entire days and 
nights upon the cross. Great, therefore, was his surprise when, on the request of 
Joseph of Arimathea — of whom we shall soon have occasion to speak — the cen- 
turion whom he had sent to break the legs of the crucified, and who, by his 
orders, had just returned, assured him that Jesus had died before this torture 
could be inflicted. 

As to the stroke of the lance given to the Saviour, besides the mysterious 
reasons for which Providence permitted it, we find its explanation in the custom 



70 



Twelfth Station. 



just described. To assure himself that our Lord was truly dead, and to extin- 
guish in Him the last spark of life which might remain, a soldier did in His 
regard what was usually done for the crucified. 

Under a different form the custom of which Origen speaks was preserved in 
the ancient criminal legislation of European nations. The executioner com- 
menced by giving to the culprit condemned to be broken a blow in the region of 
the heart, in order to diminish the pain caused by the fracturing of the arms and 
legs. In case the criminal deserved more protracted torture the blow on the 
heart was the last stroke given. This was called the coup de grace, or stroke of 
mercy. 

" Lancea latus Ejus apekuit." — The lance was employed by the Romans as 
a dagger to pierce and as a dart to be thrown by the hand. It consisted of 
three distinct parts : the head {cuspis), of bronze or iron ; the shaft (hastile), of 
ash or other wood ; and a point of metal at the end {spiculum), which served to 
fix it vertically in the ground, or which became an offensive weapon when the 
head was broken. 

It was the right side of Jesus that was pierced, as was predicted by Ezechiel 
(xlvii. 2) : " Et ecce, aquae redund antes a latere dextero, cum egrederetur vir ad 
orientem." St. Francis, in receiving the five stigmata, had his right side, his 
hands, and his feet pierced. The lance seems to have transpierced the body. 
In entering it passed through the heart, and the point came out in the left side 
under the breast. Bede, St. Bernard, and St. Bonaventure are of this opinion. 
Innocent II. has said : " The chalice is placed at the right in order to receive 
the blood which is believed to have flowed from the right side of Christ. " The 
Ethiopian version of the gospel of St. John reads : il His right side." The right 
side of Jesus, turned on the cross towards the west ; naturally presented itself to 
the view of the soldiers coming to Calvary from the Pretorium. 

Bede relates that in his time the lance, set in a cross of wood, was venerated 
in the porch of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and that its wood, broken in 
two parts, was honored in the city. In 1092 it was found again at Antioch, in 
St. Peter's Church, whence it was brought to Jerusalem, and afterwards to Con- 
stantinople when Jerusalem was taken by Godfrey de Bouillon. Baldwin gave 
the point of it and the sponge to St. Louis. The rest of the iron of this lance 
was preserved at Constantinople in the Church of St. John. Mohammed IL, 
after having taken the city in 1453, with the treasures of the emperor and the 
relics of the saints, kept it in security ; and Bajazet, his son and successor, sent it 
in 1492, by an ambassador, to Innocent VIII., who placed it in the palace of the 
Vatican (Sandini, Hist, cle la Ste. Famille). 

" And immediately there came out Blood and Water." — Tertullian sees 
in this blood and water that issued from the side of Jesus the twofold image of 
martyrdom and baptism — two graces which can come only from the merciful 
heart of the Saviour and give back to Him the souls He has redeemed. "I 
have yet another baptism," says He; this is why there came out blood and 
water from the wound of His side, precious matter for this double baptism {De 
Fudicitia, vers. Jin.) 

" And he that saw it hath given testimony : and his testimony is true. 
And he knoweth that he saith true ; that you also may believe." — An 
important remark that may be here made is that St. John is the only one of the 
Evangelists who has transmitted to us these last circumstances of the Passion of 



Testimony of St. John. 



71 



the Saviour — that is to say, the Jews going to Pilate to petition the crurifragium 
of the crucified and the piercing of the sacred side of Jesus. We know that the 
Beloved Apostle wrote long after the other Evangelists, having for his object not 
to repeat what others had said, but to mention irnrjortant circumstances and 
facts which they had passed over in silence, and especially to place in bold re- 
lief all that could prove the divinity of the Saviour. We know from history 
that it was already denied even during the life of that apostle. In his interest- 
ing Discourses on the Eelation between Science and Revealed Religion (fifth disc.) Car- 
dinal Wiseman conjectures, with a very high degree of probability, that in the 
time of St. John unbelievers had — as those of our own day — attempted to call in 
question the reality of the death of Jesus, or at least that solemn and important 
fact which at that time was only a matter of tradition, and which he here attests 
and affirms with special instance and solicitude. 

We will not dwell even for an instant on the gross and revolting blasphemies 
of various unbelievers, some of whom have carried their insolence so far as to ac- 
cuse our Redeemer of having only feigned death on the cross, while others have 
pretended to prove that He was taken down from the cross in a state of asphyxia, 
or suspended animation. These impieties, as monstrous as they are ridiculous, 
carry with them their own refutation. For the rest, the answers to such objec- 
tions belong rather to special apologies than to a treatise such as we have pro- 
posed to ourselves. Those who are interested in the physiological questions re- 
lating to the Passion of our Saviour must have recourse to the authors cited by 
the learned Cardinal Wiseman (fifth Lecture). 

" These things were done," adds the Beloved Disciple, " that the scripture 
might be fulfilled : You shall not break a bone of Him. And again another scripture 
saith : They shall look on Him whom they pierced.' 1 '' 

" The Evangelist," says St. Jerome {ad Pamm.), " cites according to the He- 
brew text. The Septuagint, according to the Latin version, reads : They will 
cast their eyes upon Me, touched by their insults and outrages against Me. The ver- 
sion of the Evangelist, that of the Septuagint, and our Vulgate [St. Jerome so 
names a Latin version made on that of the Septuagint, and in use in his time] 
do not agree on this text; but the difference, which consists only in the words, 
does not hinder the spirit and sense from being the same." 

Zicharias also says (xii. 10) : " I will pour out upon the house of David, and 
upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of prayers: and they 
shall look upon Me, whom they have pierced : and they shall mourn with tears 
and sighs as one mourneth for an only son, and they shall grieve over Him, as 
the manner is to grieve for the death of the first-born." 

This prophecy has been perfectly accomplished in all ages, and will be ful- 
filled to the end of time. Meditation on the sufferings of Jesus caused by our 
sins will draw down abundant graces upon our souls, and will infallibly produce 
in the heart all the effects described in this prophecy. No Christian can make 
the Way of the Cross without contributing to its immense and daily accomplish- 
ment. 



72 



Thirteenth Station. 



THIRTEENTH STATION. 



THE SACRED BODY OF JESUS TA K EN DOWN FROM 
THE CROSS AND EMBALMED. 



We must here become acquainted with two personages, ever celebrated, al- 
though only for having been predestined by God to take down our Saviour from 
the cross and pay Him the last rites of sepulture. A senator of the Jews, a rich 
man living in Jerusalem, appears in the foreground and will first occupy our at- 
tention. 

Long before the birth of this man the prophet Isaias contemplated him be- 
side the inanimate body of our divine Redeemer, occupied with the holy func- 
tions for which he was divinely predestined ; and he announced hira in these 
terms (liii. 9) : "He [God the Father] shall give the ungodly for His burial, and 
the rich for His death." That is to say that God will confide the sepulchre of 
His Son to the impious, who will guard it from the moment He shall be therein 
deposited ; and that He will confide His body, as soon as He shall have expired, 
to the care of a rich man — a circumstance of which the Evangelist designedly 
speaks in order to lead to this prophecy : " Venit homo dives. . . 

The prophet alludes to the simple ministry or part taken by the impious and 
the rich man relatively to the sacred body of the Messias, to His burial and His 
tomb. To the rich man are given the functions of a pious disciple, and we shall 
see with what holy dispositions he will perform them ; to the impious will be 
given the commission to succeed to the ministry of the former. Functions ap- 
parently so opposed, as regards the persons, their dispositions, and their views, 
will very soon be made by Providence to effect the same end. 

JOSEPH OF ABIMA THE A. 

His Name. — This rich man was called Joseph, a name at that time very 
popular in the Jewish nation. It recalled one of the brightest glories of the Old 
Testament. To Joseph, son of Jacob, God confided the salvation of His people, 
which people He was often pleased to name His Son. This name was also to re- 
call for ever the most holy functions in a Testament just inaugurated and never to 
have an end. The Lord confided His Son, reduced to the weakness of infancy, 
to Joseph, son also of another Jacob, and spouse of Mary ; and He confides to 
another Joseph this same Son, reduced by death to still greater infirmity. It was 
His will that the first should conceal the mysteries of His incarnation, and that 
the second should begin to unveil the mysteries of His ignominies and His death. 
He chose the first in an obscure condition and buried in the little city of Galilee, 
although inheritor of the throne of David and originally from Bethlehem, to 
nourish His Son in obscurity ; but the second He chose at Jerusalem and from 
among the senator^ to cause to be rendered to Him the honors of a glorious 
burial, not by his servants, as it is said of Joseph son of Jacob, but by himself 
and by his personal ministry, and with a profusion differing but little from that 
which became the master of Egypt. Happy were both to have been selected in 



Josepli of ArimatJiea. 



73 



preference to all others to receive Jesus Christ at His birth and at His death ; at 
His entrance into the world and at His departure from it; when He came to us 
not having a place whereon to rest His head, and when He left us not possessing 
a spot of ground to serve for His tomb. Happy were both to have been the cus- 
todians of the most precious of all deposits, and to have known its worth, while 
the humiliations of the crib and the ignominy of the cross hid it from the rest of 
the world. Happy were both to have overcome their fear, which would have de- 
prived them of the greatest blessing they were capable of receiving: an angel 
who discovered the greatness of Mary reassured the one; and grace which re- 
vealed the glory of the cross allayed the fear of the other. Happy were both to 
have merited the name of "just " given to them by the Holy Ghost, and to have 
become the models of those "who approach Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, 
where He is still more hidden under the veils of the Eucharist than in the crib or 
upon the cross. 

His birthplace was, according to the Scripture, the city of Arimathea, in 
Judea (St. Luke) — at that time inhabited by the two tribes of Benjamin and Juda 
— which rose in the plains of Sharon between Jerusalem and Joppa. Although 
Joseph was born in that city, he was, nevertheless, a citizen of Jerusalem, and 
the care he took to prepare his tomb in its neighborhood is a proof of this fact. 

His Functions and Qualities. — He is called in the Latin version nobilis decu- 
rio, because he was one of the ten magistrates or senators who held in Jerusalem 
the principal authority under the Romans. This is more clearly explained in the 
Greek text, which marks his dignity by the two teims ill 'usti ■ions and senator. 
Both words can be joined, as in the Vulgate, ndbiUs decurio, and as in Erasmus, 
lwnestus senator; but they may also be divided. 

There is good reason to suppose that he was one of the seventy judges who 
composed the supreme council which the Jews called the Sanlicdrin : 1st, because 
it was usual to admit into that assembly senators, who were the ancients of the 
people, and their chiefs and princes; 2d, because it is said of Joseph that he had 
not consented to the designs of the Jews, and that he had taken no part in what 
they had done against Jesus Christ, which seems to prove that he had the right 
to deliberate with them and to have a seat in their assemblies, although he had 
courage and firmness enough not to approve the conclusion, or to avoid taking 
any part in it. 

Praises given him by the Gospel. — Upon this man the Gospel bestows a five- 
fold praise: it calls him a noble, rich, good, and just man, and one who expected 
the kingdom of God. Truly five admirable qualities, w T hich are often found 
singly in persons but seldom united : rich and just, noble and good, rich and not 
unjust, noble and not proud, noble and rich, and yet expecting the kingdom of 
God! Because Joseph possessed all these qualities at once, no ruling opinion, no 
envy or delusion, could deceive him; for this reason he had never taken part in 
the plans and deliberations of his colleagues, though he durst not oppose them 
openly. 

He had been for a long time a disciple of Jesus, but in secret for fear of the 
Jews; but his fear was compatible with sincere virtue, since St. Luke says of him 
that he was "virtuous and just," and that u he was expecting the kingdom of 
God" (xxiii. 50) ; ki he had not consented to their counsel and doings"; he pre- 
served himself pure in the midst of a corrupt nation, and he had done nothing 
unworthy of the faith and hope of a man that was expecting the true Messias; he 



74 



Thirteenth Station. 



was not in the error of the people, who desired only a temporal liberator, but had 
a sincere love of true justice and of the eternal goods which are its recompense. 

Thus did he verify in himself these words which the royal prophet inscribed 
at the head of his book : " Blessed is the man who hath not walked in the coun- 
sel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the chair of pesti- 
lence." " It is meet," adds Tertullian at the end of this text, "that the man who 
was to lay the Saviour in the tomb should have equally His prophecy and His 
merited benediction" (Contr. Marc, iv. 42). 

NICODEM US. 

The other illustrious personage whom God would associate with Joseph for 
the burial of His Son was named, in the then usual Syriac language, Nasuam. 
In the Greek language and in the Gospel of St. John — written in Greek, and 
especially for the Greeks — this name was translated in its exact meaning by 
Nicodemus, which in our language is people's victory. Following the Gospel, we 
will name him Nicodemus. He was nephew of the great Gamaliel, whom St. 
Paul afterwards gloried in having had for his master, and whom the primitive 
Church early counted among its members. Like Joseph, he also was originally 
from Arimathea. A tradition, which I have not examined, says that Joseph and 
Nicodemus were not only fellow-countrymen, but also united in the same avoca- 
tion as sculptors.* This was the opinion of Pere Boniface de Kaguse, who was 

* Although I have made no special researches on this tradition, I must not neglect to cite two facts 
which support it. The first is the crucifix of Lucques (Lucca), attributed at all times to St. Nicodemus. 
He represents our Lord on the cross, crowned, clothed in a sleeved habit, with shoes on, and the feet 
separated. It is of cedar wood. The second fact was made known at the second Council of Nice (the 
seventh oecumenical), held in April. 786, against Vandalism and the savage errors of the Iconoclasts. 
In the fourth session, devoted exclusively to proving from the Scripture and the Fathers the^Catholic 
dogma and the perpetuity of tradition on images, the Fathers produced a discourse of a holy bishop 
named Athanasius, whom they admit to be, not the holy patriarch of Alexandria, but a Syrian bishop 
of the same name. The passage read contained in substance the following : " There was a Christian 
living near the synagogue who had a crucifix hung on the wall by his bed, and who served God in the 
simplicity of his soul. But his house being too small for his family, he sold it, and the purchaser was 
an Israelite. The latter, soon after being put in possession of his new dwelling, invited some friends to 
a banquet ; one of the guests, having remarked the image of Christ, which had been forgotten, addressed 
severe reproaches to the proprietor, and went to the chief priest to report the fact. A large assemblage 
was very soon formed, and the chief priest with the ancients repaired to the dwelling indicated. When 
they arrived they seized the crucifix, saying : ' Our fathers loaded this Man with insults ; let us follow 
the example they have left us.' So forthwith they began to spit upon and demolish the crucifix, renew- 
ing upon it all that the Saviour had suffered in His dolorous Passion ; but when they came to pierce 
the side there flowed from it water and blood. They collected the water and blood in a vase, asking 
one another in amazement what this strange thing could mean. Then, having deliberated on the mat- 
ter, they said among themselves : ' The disciples of Jesus assert that He performed prodigies of all 
kinds ; we shall see if others will be wrought. Let us bring the vase into the synagogue, and sprinkle 
this blood over the sick, and if what they say of Jesus be true they will be healed.' Accordingly, hav- 
ing taken the vase to the synagogue, numerous wonderful cures of blindness, paralysis, leprosy, and 
all kinds of diseases were instantly effected. Seeing these wonders, the Jews asked pardon for their 
fault, were converted to the Lord, and their synagogue was changed into a Christian church, which 
was dedicated to the Saviour. They afterwards enquired the origin of this miraculous crucifix, and 
they discovered that it had been made by the senator Nicodemus, a Pharisee, the same who had come 
to our Saviour by night, and who later on had rendered to him, with Joseph of Arimathea, the last 
rites of sepulture. The crucifix had successively belonged to Gamaliel, St. Paul, and St. James before 
coming into the possession of the proprietor of Beyrouth." The miraculous blood was afterwards put, 
by the care of the bishop, into many small vials, which were sent to various s places. The church of 
Constantinople obtained one of them, which was subsequently transported to Venice, where it is still 
venerated. The ancient Jewish synagogue, which became a Christian church under the invocation of 
the Holy Saviour, ha» been unhappily converted into a Mohammedan mosque for many ages. 



Nicodemus. 



75 



guardian of Mount Sion about the year 1550, and who wrote a very detailed 
description of the Holy Land. He contended that the sanctuary of the Fran- 
ciscans of Ramlech (ancient Arirnathea) had succeeded to the studio where Nico- 
demus had carved the crucifix which k still venerated in the cathedral of 
Lucca. Does this tradition spring from the resemblance of the destinies of 
these two personages, or does this striking resemblance of conduct and destiny 
come rather from their close connection and intimate friendship ? Both, in fact, 
are disciples of Jesus, but in secret — a thing which is said only of these two. 
Both are rich, respected, influential; both members of the Sanhedrin. Both at 
the same time take up the defence of Jesus and declare themselves in His favor. 
Finally, both unite to give to the Saviour an honorable burial. Hence so great a 
similarity of views and conduct can come only from frequent intercourse and 
intimate friendship, or from an habitual association in the same work, as in that 
supposed by the tradition. 

Although of the Pharisean sect, Nicodemus had been, in the order of time, 
one of the first disciples of our Saviour. Struck by the sight of miracles which 
the Gospel does not relate, performed by Jesus Christ at Jerusalem at the time 
of the first Passover that succeeded the opening of His divine ministry, Nicode- 
mus, attracted by grace, came for the first time under cover of the night to find 
the adorable Master, thus imploring His heavenly light : " Rabbi, we know that 
Thou art come a teacher from God; for no man can do these signs which Thou 
dost, unless God be with him." It was then that the divine Master instructed the 
learned and docile Pharisee, as it is said in the third chapter of St. John, reveal- 
ing to him the highest mysteries of the kingdom of heaven — viz. : our regene- 
ration by baptism, His incarnation, and our future redemption by the cross. 

The master in Israel listened to all these new doctrines with the respect and 
submission due to a Teacher descended from heaven. His heart was gained to 
Jesus. We can readily believe that this was certainly not the only time that he 
sought his new Master ; at least the Gospel inclines us to believe (when, refer- 
ring to him again, it says : " He who at the first used to come to Jesus by night") 
that from time to time he loved to come to be more and more enlightened at His 
school and to taste His divine doctrines, and that he placed himself in the num- 
ber of the disciples who followed His teaching without following His person in 
His numerous journeys. 

Secret disciple though he was, he was far from being wanting in zeal ; for we 
shall see him towards the end of our Saviour's career, and therefore at an epoch 
when the hatred of the Jews was becoming more and more terrible, openly take 
up the defence of Jesus before the whole senate against the furious Pharisees, 
showing them that others than the vile populace attached themselves to Jesus. 
On that day, struck with the truth of his reproaches, they left the assembly in 
confusion, and the champion of Jesus Christ remained sole master of the field. 
u Hail to thee, nocturnal worshipper!" as Gregory of Nazianzen calls him. In 
vain do the furious senators endeavor afterw r ards to make him ashamed of his 
fidelity by bitter reproaches: "Thou also, then, art become a Galilean ? " He 
suffers this opprobrium in silence, and, firm in his confidence, he hopes, like his 
Mend Joseph, that a marvellous change will be wrought by the right hand of 
the Most High. 

Behold him finally arrived at that period of his life when the sight of the 
mysterious serpent raised on the mountain will entirely heal him of his timidity. 



76 



Thirteenth Station. 



Jesus has been sold for thirty pieces of silver by one of His own apostles, con- 
demned by the great council, delivered up to the Romans, scourged, trodden 
under foot, proscribed, banished from the city, nailed to a gibbet. Behold Him 
tortured and dead upon the cross ! Is that your Master, Joseph and Nicodemus? 
Is that the glorious Prophet that was to found on earth the kingdom of God ¥ 
Fly ! hide yourselves now with more prudence than ever. Fly ! depart from Je- 
rusalem, that you may escape the triumphant mockeries of your fellow-citizens. 
See, His apostles have taken flight; His declared disciples are hidden and silent. 

But no ; they speak, and speak loudly ; for acts, as St. Cyprian says, are more 
eloquent than words. Scarcely heretofore did they dare pronounce the name of 
Jesus in public ; and behold now they praise Him with fearless courage by their 
fervent and solemn services. 

Thus this grain of celestial wheat has been but just planted in the ground and 
is dead when it begins to produce the riches of its fruits. Scarcely has the 
Saviour, the sacred object of their respectful love, expired in ignominy and cruel 
torments when a new and glorious courage reveals itself in their hearts. Min- 
gled with the multitude in grief and terror, they have heard His cry of adieu and 
victory ; they have seen His holy Mother standing bathed in tears, as a palm oi* 
peace at the foot of His cross. The death of Jesus has entirely changed them ; 
they no longer find in their hearts either the inspirations of self-love or the sug- 
gestions of timidity. They have but one thought — to bury their sublime Master 
as honorably as His death had bee*n ignominious. And it was meet that they 
alone, men of wealth, rank, and dignity, should execute this great work. This 
shows the truth of these prophetic words of Jesus: " And I, if I be lifted up 
from the earth, will draw all things to Myself" (John xii. 32). With what 
facility He will draw after Him the great and powerful of the earth — the whole 
world — when the moment appointed in the economy of His eternal designs shall 
have come ! 

As to what relates to the remainder of the life of Nicodenius, the reader may 
be interested to know that finally, after the descent of the Holy Ghost, when the 
profession of faith had become as necessary to salvation as faith itself, Nicode- 
mus was baptized by the apostles of the Saviour, according to the general tradi- 
tion related by St. Augustine (in Joan., serm. 120) ; according to Photius (cod. 
171, p. 584) and other authorities whom he cites, it was St. Peter and St. John 
who baptized him. And despite his rank, wealth, and influence, he confessed 
the name of his beloved Master. In revenge for his faith in Jesus the Jews de- 
posed him from his office, degraded him from his rank, anathematized him — 
that is, expelled him from the synagogue — and banished him even from the city 
of Jerusalem (Baron., Ann. 3, 4; Tillemont, t. i. p. 26)«. These things happened 
to him, according to all appearance, during the persecution which followed the 
death of St. Stephen, and of which St. Luke speaks in the Acts of the Apostles. 
Some add that the Jews even formed the design of putting him to death, but 
that they spared him in consideration of Gamaliel, his kinsman, who employed 
his great influence to protect him, contenting themselves with scourging him and 
pillaging his goods (Photius, loc. ctt.) What is certain is that Gamaliel, seeing 
him persecuted for Jesus Christ, caused him to retire to a country-house in a vil- 
lage called, from his own name, Caphar-Gamala (Village of Gamaliel), about 
twenty miles from Jerusalem, and supplied him in that retreat with all that he 
needed. Nicodemus there ended his days in peace, and Gamaliel took care to 



Jesus is taken down from the Cross. 



77 



have his body interred near that of St. Stephen, in the tomb he had prepared for 
his family. 

It was there that in the year 415, under the pontificate of John, Bishop of 
Jerusalem, and under the empire of Honorius, took place the solemn discovery 
of his relics according to a circumstantiated and incontestable revelation made 
to Lucian, pastor of Caphar-Gamala, who was the instrument and minister of 
that discovery, as he testifies in a letter addressed by him to all the faithful. 
With these relics were found also, on one side, those of St. Stephen, first 
martyr, and on the other those of Gamaliel himself, as well as those of his son 
Abidas, who, in his baptismal innocence, died at the age of twenty years. On 
the tomb of our saint was found engraved the word Nasuam, the Syrian word, 
corresponding to the Greek Nicodemus. This discovery and these relics were at 
that time the occasion and instrument of miracles as numerous as they were in- 
contestable, known throughout the whole Catholic world, and certified by the 
multiplied testimony of contemporary authors, as Orosius, St. Augustine, Avitus, 
etc. — which renders them one of the most universal and incontestable facts in 
ecclesiastical history. They may be read in the sermons of these great men, and 
found in abridged forms in all hagiographies (Alban Butler's, Baillet's, etc.) 
under the date of August 3. 

JE8V8 IS TAKEN DOWN FROM THE CROSS. 

Let us now return to where we left Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, 
about to undertake the holy work which has immortalized their names both in 
the Gospel and in the hearts of the faithful. 

When the great hour was come Joseph hastens at once to the governor. His 
wealth, his position, the general esteem in which he was held, were calculated to 
win him many favors. But Pilate was not in a mood for audiences. He had 
had enough of the bloody day's work. That day he had sinned against his 
conscience by decreeing the death of an innocent Man ; he wished to be done 
with it and to forget it. It required, therefore, no small share of courage to 
appeal to him on the occasion. Besides, by this course Joseph was exposing 
himself to the hatred of the persecuting Pharisees. No matter. " Joseph went 
in boldly to Pilate," says the Evangelist, " and asked for the body of Jesus." 
Pilate did not know whether to grant the request or not. His first thought was 
one of wonder that Jesus was already dead. The centurion who had the execu- 
tion in charge was sent for ; he confirmed the statement, and the body was yielded 
up. Pilate was apparently pleased to show that he honored the illustrious Con- 
demned whose defence he had at first attempted. This permission of Pilate 
prevented the designs of Joseph from being frustrated by the Jews. As soon as 
he had obtained it he bought a pure and ample shroud. Nicodemus, on his part, 
procured a hundred pounds of aloes and myrrh, which were combined and 
mixed in the proportion usual in the art of embalming. A little while and they 
are at Calvary, accompanied by a few servants. 

Now follows the taking down from the cross, so often and so perfectly re- 
presented in the pictures of the old masters. It is not dillicult to represent to 
ourselves with what respect these two men go up to the cross of their Master ; 
with what attention they consider the peace and dignity that shine in His adora- 
ble countenance even after His death ; with what sorrow and compassion they 
see Him suspended from the tree by His (bur wounds ; with what emotion they 



78 



Thirteenth Station. 



commence to draw out the nails that fasten Him thereto. But who can describe 
their joy and gratitude when very soon they shall learn and see with their own 
eyes, after the resurrection of Jesus, that He has retained in His hands and feet, 
to bear them to the right hand of His Father and preserve them throughout 
eternity, the marks of these sacred wounds ? What, I say, will be their feelings 
at the thought that they were the first and the only ones who were permitted to 
touch them, to embrace them, to fill them with their perfumes, and to water 
them with their tears ? 

Tenderly and reverently has Nicodemus wound the white linen round the 
body of Christ, and gently lowered it, with the help of St. John and Joseph of 
Arimathea. Now, indeed, they possess at last the most precious treasure in 
heaven or on earth ! 

Here Christian hearts love to plunge into the abysses of the maternal heart of 
Mary, whose grief at that time, like her love, was as vast as the sea — M Magna 
est sicut mare contritio tua." Beholding Jesus dead upon the knees of Mary at 
the foot of the bloody cross, they listen in mute attention to the maternal ac- 
cents of her incomparable sorrow. What must have been the expressions at 
such a moment of this Mother of Dolors ? " Adorable body ! so disfigured by 
torments the most frightful, by a death the most horrible, permit, ah ! permit 
me to water thee with my tears. . . . O torments which the affrighted soul 
shudders to conceive, and which the voice of angels can never express, even when 
at the foot of the throne they sing the Lord Eternal ! . . . What pallor, O 
great God ! what pallor overspreads His divine features, where lately shone, with 
so many celestial charms, a beauty inconceivable, a grandeur all divine — the hea- 
venly calm, the sweet smile of pardon, human goodness joined to a celestial 
clemency. His eyelids are drooped ; . . . those mild eyes, the sanctuary of 
love, whence beamed forth only looks of tenderness and mercy, now entirely de- 
void of brightness, "but moistened still with tears, the expression of His never- 
failing pity ! . . . His divine mouth is sealed with the seal of death ! His 
adorable lips, whence flowed words of life, whose celestial smile pictured the 
delights of heaven, and which opened only to announce clemency and to pro- 
nounce the pardon of sinners, now pale and shrivelled ! . . . These hands, 
ever employed in spreading benefits around, now cold, motionless, transpierced, 
and covered with blood ! . . . His sacred head reposes on the damp stone, 
over which falls His bloody hair. . . . This bosom of the Lord, ever open 
to the miseries of all, now immovable and wrapped in a winding-sheet ! . . . 
This side pierced with a lance, these gaping wounds ; these sacred feet, ever oc- 
cupied in seeking the strayed sheep, now bored through with nails ! O Jesus ! 
O my love ! . . . O my well-beloved ! Jesus, hear the cry of my sorrow 
at this heartrending sight which congeals my blood and cramps the faculties of 
my soul. . . . What a frightful outrage ! . . . What a horrible crime ! 
. . . And how must it wound the heart of a Father who, touched with 
compassion at the fate of His slaves, sent them His only Son to perform the work 
of their reconciliation, and who sees them immolate with their own hands their 
very Liberator! . . ." (De Geramb, t. i. pp. 37G, 377). 

On the Absence op Mary. — However tender the sentiments which such a 
scene naturally excites, it is true that certain authors have raised doubts as to its 
historic verity. The celebrated hagiographer, George Heinschenius, Bollandist, 
thus expresses his sentiments (Boll., t. x. p. 808, No. 1) ; 




©If THU mOLYflfULCHTRE. 



Topographical Notes. 



79 



"The holy Apostle and Evangelist, John, writing on the mysteries of our 
redemption wrought by Jesus on the cross, expresses himself in these terms: 
' Stabant autem juxta crucem, etc. . . . Etexillahora accepit earn discipu- 
lus in sua.' Are'we to understand in sua tutela, or in domo sua, and translate, 
From that same moment when the darkness was becoming more and more dense : 
or, From that same moment when, Jesus having given up the ghost, the earth 
began to tremble ? . . . John led her from amidst the tumult of spectators 
in company with Mary of Cleophas and Mary Magdalene. These two holy women 
returned ; we find them at the sepulchre in the Gospel narratives, leading the 
funeral procession of the Saviour and watching by His tomb. But Mary the 
Mother of Jesus — did she return ? That is not at all certain, for we find no fur- 
ther mention of her on Calvary." 

John Hesselius, in his Censure of Certain Lives of the Saints, printed atLouvain 
in 1568, in the first edition of Usuard, annotated by Molanus (ch.iv.), does not 
hesitate to thus express himself : " Under the influence of a devotion which is 
not sufficiently solid, the Blessed Virgin has been painted as holding on her 
knees the inanimate body of Christ taken down from the cross, and contemplating 
His sepulchre." We will leave to others," concludes the learned Bollandist, 
" the task of examining with more attention what real foundation these represen- 
tations can have, which are so pleasing not only to the Greeks but also to the 
modern Latins." 

I doubt very much whether any pious soul adopts their sentiments. As for 
the rest, we will return to this point. Let us here observe, as we have said, with 
St. Bonaventure, that these devotions are lawful, even should they not have their 
foundation in the historic narrative of the Holy Scriptures, as long as they are 
not evidently contrary thereunto ; they have their reality, not less Solid and 
precious, in the holy dispositions which meditation on them excites in the 
heart. 

TOPO GRAPHICAL NOTES. 

The washing, embalming, and sepulture of the Divine Body — the subjects of 
this Thirteenth Station — were performed a little below, but not far from, the 
place where the bloody cross of the Redeemer was still standing. The distance 
was about twenty-nine paces to the west. There they find a rock with a flat 
surface, whereon they extend the Divine Body, and, after having washed it, they 
perfume it with myrrh and aloes, and wrap it piously in multiplied folds of 
white linen. This rock is now venerated under the name of the Stone of Unction. 
The Stone of Unction is raised above the ground only three or four inches. It 
is about seven feet six inches long and three feet nine inches wide. It is the 
first object that strikes the eyes of the pilgrim on his entrance into the basilica 
of the Holy Sepulchre. " Some think," says Chateaubriand, "that it is part of 
the rock of Calvary, while others hold that it was brought thither by Joseph 
and Nicodemus, and that it is of a greenish color. Be this as it may, owing to 
the indiscretion of some pilgrims who broke it, it has been necessary to cover it 
with white marble, and to surround it with a little iron balustrade for fear of 
being walked on " (Itiner., p. 222). At the two extremities are six enormous 
candelabra of great beauty with tall wax lights; and each of the four corners is 
adorned with gilded copper balls. Around it burn six silver lamps. The Stone 
of Unction is in common possession; that is to say, it belongs to the Catholics, 



80 



Thirteenth Station. 



the Greeks, and the Armenians, who come every day successively to incense it. 
It is opposite the door and about fifty feet distant from it. 

To the left, at about sixteen paces from the Stone of Unction, is a yellow 
marble slab surrounded by an iron balustrade ; it indicates the place where Mary 
and the holy women stayed at a respectful distance during the embalming of 
the body of our Saviour.* They remained there also during His deposition in 
the tomb. 

RELICS OF OUR SAVIOUR 

PRESERVED, ACCORDING TO TRADITION, DY JOSEPH OP ARIMATHEA AND 

NICODEMUS. 

Authentic documents attest that at the time of the discovery of the tomb of 
St. Stephen there was found there a vial of his blood. We have a thousand 
proofs that the Christians of the primitive ages exposed their lives to obtain the 
blood of the martyrs. Now, St. Stephen was stoned in the very year of our 
Saviour's death. Can it be doubted that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, 
the Blessed Virgin, and the holy women, collected with still greater care the 
precious blood which flowed from His wounds ? It is true the canonical gospels 
are silent on this head ; but all that was done is not contained therein. The 
gospels themselves formally declare that they have omitted many things. The 
apocryphal gospels accord too well on this point with the usages of the primitive 
Christians and the traditions of the Church not to serve as an historical author- 
ity of great value. They say that Joseph of Arimathea, after having washed the 
body of Jesus, preserved the water he had used for that purpose, and which was 
red with^he blood ; that he kept with still greater care the blood which issued 
from His wounds ; and that he considered both as an inestimable treasure for 
himself and his successors. 

The Church of the East has inscribed among her saints the pious hermit 
Barypsasba, who, according to the Greek menologium, had in his possession the 
blood which flowed from the side of our Saviour, and with which he wrought 
many cures. He was killed by the infidels, but his precious treasure was pre- 
served by one of his disciples and transported to Constantinople. In the year 
804 Leo III. had the proofs of the authenticity of the sacred blood preserved at 
Mantua examined, and he confirmed them by a bull. 

Azon, prefect of Jerusalem, undertook a journey to Europe to bring to Charle- 
magne a vial containing some of the Saviour's blood. Charlemagne sent depu- 
ties to meet him, and went himself to Sicily to receive the holy relic. When 
Baldwin, Emperor of Constantinople, in recompense for the succor which St. 
Louis had accorded him, sent him the crown of thorns and some of the wood of 
the true cross, there was also sent a portion of the sacred blood. The King of 

* This tradition, and the monument relating to it, confirm the presence of Mary with the holy wo- 
men at the obsequies of our Saviour, being certainly anterior to the epoch at which the two authors 
cited above, Henschenius and Hesselius, wrote. Moreover, what were those numerous tableaux which 
Hesselius tells us were so much to the taste of the Greeks and modern Latins, if not monuments of 
an ancient tradition and of the general belief of Christians ? This sentiment is at least a very singular 
one ; for where is the mother that would not find in her desolate heart strength enough to assist at the 
funeral of her son, or that could be indifferent either to the honor rendered to his remains or to the 
tomb wherein he was laid ? Assuredly such a one could not be the Mother whom the Scripture repre- 
sents as the perfect woman, the strong woman, who alone of all mothers adored her God in the person 
of her Son. From the silence of the Scriptures on this point nothing of this can be inferred. 



The Holy Shrouds. 



81 



England, Henry III., earnestly requested a part of the holy blood which was still 
at Jerusalem, and a Templar was charged with its transportation to England. 
Thierry d'Alsace, Count of Flanders, who had rendered signal services to the 
Holy Land, obtained from the king and the patriarch of Jerusalem, in recom- 
pense for his exploits, a vial of the precious blood, which at present is at Bruges. 
It was given to Thierry in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. Half of what 
remained of the precious blood is preserved in that church. 

The presentation of these relics to kings and to high personages who had a 
claim to the public gratitude is in itself a guarantee of their authenticity. The 
value attached thereunto testifies to the certitude of the tradition that preserved 
them. 

11 At Venice, in the church of St. Mark, they showed me a vase," says Mgr. 
Mislin, " which contained the precious blood that flowed from the crucifix of 
Beyrouth." 

THE HOLY SHROUDS: EXPOSITION, EXPLANATION, AND GENERAL 

PROOFS. 

i 

The Evangelists, wishing to show the importance of the linen which served 
to envelop the body of Jesus, mention it several tiuies — when Joseph and Nico- 
demus embalmed it, according to the custom of the Jews, and when the apostles 
returned to the sepulchre. The faithful have lovingly preserved these precious 
and abundant relics. Since, as in the case of the cross, this abundance might 
become a pretext for denying their authenticity, we will endeavor to show that 
the Jewish manner of burial required large quantities of linen. Unhappily, there 
remains to us on this subject very little information emanating directly from the 
Hebrews, but w T e have complete proofs from a people with whom they w r ere so 
long and so intimately mingled, many of whose usages they adopted — viz., the 
Egyptians. Of these usages history and monuments, after forty centuries, reveal 
to us the most circumstantial details. D. Langelle and the savants who have 
treated these questions, supporting their statements by the Bible, agree in saying 
that the Jews imitated very nearly the ceremonies of the Egyptians in the sepul- 
ture of their dead. Hence, in studying the latter we learn the customs of the 
former. Such is the object of the following researches, the development of 
which the patient reader will pardon because of the gravity of the subject. 

The most ancient examples of embalming which are furnished by Genesis 
(1. 2, 3, 25) are those of Jacob and his son Joseph. They were after the Egyp- 
tian manner. When St. John represents to us Lazarus, who had been dead, 
coming forth from the tomb bound hand and foot with linen bands and the 
face wrapped in a shroud, does he not show us a mummy in its multiplied folds 
of cloth? We can, therefore, follow w T ith assurance the authors who describe 
Egyptian funerals in examining the Jewish customs relating to burial. 

Speaking on this subject, Herodotus, who lived in Egypt, informs us that 
there were three kinds of embalming, each of which he describes in detail. The 
embalming of the first class, which required long preparations and lasted not 
less than seventy days, could not be applied to Jesus on account of the w T ant of 
time. But He could be given that of the second class. 

Diodorus of Sicily, who lived under Julius Caesar and Augustus, informs us 
among other details that this second-class embalming cost at least twenty minas. 



82 



Thirteenth Station. 



The mina of the Old Testament was valued at fifty shekels, which latter, accord- 
ing to our present system, is worth about sixty-two and a half cents. The Greek 
or Attic mina was worth about fourteen dollars. We see from this the reason 
the Evangelist, speaking of Joseph, who charged himself with the funeral of the 
Saviour, calls him a rich man. 

Abd-el-Lateef, an Arabian doctor and historian (1161-1231), in a description 
of Egypt, speaking of interments, says that the bodies were wrapped in hempen 
shrouds. For some of them more than one thousand ells of linen were employed. 
Whatever may be the measure corresponding to this term, the author evidently 
wished to express a considerable quantity. 

Let us add that all the denudations of mummies, not only Egyptian but 
Greek, made in our time by learned archaeologists or doctors, serve to confirm 
this fact of the multiplicity of linen cloths employed in ancient enshroudings. 
Attention to and appreciation of this fact would have spared in the past a vast 
number of objections and long-continued disputes. Among the most obstinate 
and uncompromising opponents we may count the old Jansenist Baillet, whom 
his contemporaries surnamed the denicJieur de saints (dethroner of saints) ; he and 
his co-laborers did not foresee that so many researches and disputes would finally 
but fix them with still greater solidity upon their immovable pedestals. 

It is reasonable to believe, then, that the multiplicity of shroudings employed 
at the embalming of Jesus was nowise inferior to the quantity of spices, which 
were used for this purpose with lavish hand. The two friends, Joseph and Nico- 
demus, seem to have shared the expenses, as they did the honors, of the divine 
obsequies, one having bought the linen, the other the spices. Hence the multi- 
plicity of shrouds is now no longer a problem, and that great question of former 
times, Who possesses the true shroud, the authentic shroud of our Saviour? has 
no longer any weight, and merely proves long ignorance of a fact. The examina- 
tion of the wrappings of mummies has also put beyond all possible debate the 
long-contested problem of the durability of the linen, which during the past cen- 
turies was the ground of so many objections on the part of Protestant and Jan- 
senist authors. 

Another fact which dissolves into smoke an enormous mass of old objections 
is this: We know that after the embalming and enshrouding the ancients painted 
the mummies exteriorly. This was the last operation before restoring them to 
the family or bearing them to the tomb. From this cause, I think, among the 
holy shrouds that remain to us, some bear the image — not, indeed, very artistic, 
and traced with hurried hand— of our Saviour extended lifeless, and others do 
not. In two ways, therefore, in my opinion, people deceive themselves on this 
point. Some have thought that these impressions were no other than those of 
the blood of our Saviour, not reflecting that the regularity of the features destroys 
all probability of such a supposition, and forgetting that the washing of the 
bodies was invariably performed preliminary to embalming. Others have simply 
believed them to be the effect of a miracle. But since so many men — the best 
instructed in the world — have been mistaken, and the whole world with them, on 
so many geographical, physical, and other facts in matters entirely free from the 
character of miracles, a few Christians can be readily pardoned for having sup- 
posed a miracle for the explanation of this fact long before the birth of archaeo- 
logical necrology, which alone could aid in deciding on this point. Let us add 
that, in being deceived, their erroneous supposition was free from the errors of 



The? Holy Shrouds. 



83 



the great savants, for the Church never demands the assent of our faith in mat- 
ters of this kind. 

Let us hear for a moment the recital of Baillet : " The two shrouds which 
bear the print of the body of Jesus Christ are that of Turin, in Piedmont, and 
that of Besancon, in Franche-Comte. ... In this last the painting is not so 
vivid nor the traits so distinct as in the shroud of Turin. It is this circumstance 
which has caused those who have given the history of both to say that the shroud 
of Turin had served to receive the body all bloody on its being taken down from 
the cross, and that that of Besancon had served to enshroud it after it had been 
washed and embalmed. What is conflicting in this opinion is that the same 
situation of the members is to be observed in both, even to the crossing of the 
hands and the covering of the reins.. Chifflet persuades himself that the shroud 
of Besancon is, very probably, that of which Adomnan and the Venerable Bede 
speak, which, having fallen into the hands of some Jews of whom it made the 
fortune, was afterwards contested by the Christians and submitted to the judg- 
ment of Mauvias, King of the Saracens,who put it to the proof of fire, from which 
it was saved by a gust of wind, which raised it, they say, and made it fall into 
the bosom of a Christian. The reason of this author is that one is found to be 
of nearly the same length as the other — that is, about eight feet. 1 ' 

The reader, knowing the usage we have described above, can account for 
these difficulties, and can perceive that this exact resemblance of the paintings, 
far from being conflicting, as Baillet says, is, on the contrary, very accordant ; 
for this alone is able to account for all the facts he mentions : the color, from 
both sides, penetrated a second fold of the shroud, and the spices interspersed 
between the creases preserved the other folds, which perfectly explains both the 
exact resemblance and the difference pointed out by Baillet. 

Before speaking of each in particular we will exhibit the general proofs 
common to these holy objects, and which may enhance their authenticity. We 
have not, it is true, direct and explicit proof from the first ages of Christianity, 
but those we can give are by no means without weight or foundation. 

Those who have read the Scripture with reasonable attention must have re- 
marked the importance attached to these holy objects by the Holy Ghost, who 
designed that they should have a double mention in these holy books : the first, 
to indicate that they were due to the liberality of Joseph ; the second, to show 
that they were found and recognized at the tomb on the morning of the resur- 
rection of Jesus. What St. John says of them in his Gospel, chapter xx. 5-8, 
should be read with attention. 

These holy objects not only became monuments of the infinite charity of our 
Saviour for man, but were also, from the moment of His resurrection, conse- 
crated as a convincing trophy of His triumph over death. Now, how, let me 
ask, could it happen that it never occurred to any of the witnesses of the resur- 
rection — to Peter, who was the first to visit the empty tomb of Jesus; to John, 
who saw and recognized with astonishment these sacred objects, the state and 
position of which he long afterwards so exactly described in his Gospel ; to 
Magdalene, already honored with a visit from her glorious and well-beloved 
Saviour; to the holy women, so attached to Jesus and to the members of His 
holy community, and who, in the excess of their joy, visited each in turn the 
vacated tomb — how, I say, did it not occur to them to preserve these holy 
shroudings, the speaking testimonials of the resurrection of the Saviour? And 



84 



Thirteenth Station. 



could Joseph, whose property they were, have been so indifferent as not to re- 
claim them ? Assuredly this idea has not the shadow of probability, especially 
when we remember the piety which the first Christians had inherited from the 
Hebrews und practised towards the dead, and the devoted zeal with which they 
sought and preserved their relics and their blood. These holy objects, then, were 
from the very beginning the property of the faithful infant Church of Jerusalem. 
The singular dispute between the Christians and a Jewish family, which was re- 
ferred, in the year 677, to the arbitration of the Caliph Mauvias, shows that at 
that time the Church regarded these sacred objects as its special and exclusive 
property. 

But let us follow the order of time. In the beginning of the fifth century 
(409-431) the illustrious bishop of Nola, St. Paulinus, informs the celebrated 
historian Sulpicius Severus (who had earnestly requested of him one of the most 
ancient relics for a church he had "built in France) that the conservation of the 
principal relics of the Passion of Jesus Christ was demonstrated not only by tra- 
ditions, but also by the books of the most accredited ecclesiastical authors who 
were in renown in his time {Ep. 3 ad Severus Sulp., ap. Spic. D'Achery). 

The violent and cruel persecutions afterwards raised against relics as well as 
holy images — incited not only by Mohammedan Arabs, but also by the Christian 
emperors of Constantinople — revived among the faithful the desire of visiting 
the fortunate places that possessed them, and aroused the energies of generous 
writers, who set forth in bold relief the doctrine of the Church touching holy 
relics, and intrepidly affirmed their perpetual conservation. Thus it was that 
in the eighth century St. John of Damascus (who was the most famous defender 
of the Catholic worship of holy images), speaking without fear of contradiction 
before a large Christian audience, enumerated as follows the holy relics preserved 
and venerated in the patriarchal church of Jerusalem : "The sacred wood of the 
cross, the nails, the sponge, the reed, the lance, the robe, the tunic, the shrouds, 
and the bands" (Orat. 3d, de Imaginibus). Let us remark here in passing that 
St. John of Damascus, in indicating the plurality of the shrouds, intended to 
speak not only of that which served to receive the sacred body of Jesus on being 
taken down from the cross, but also of all those employed for other usages of the 
holy sepulture. 

So, also, in the same century the Venerable Bede, according to the account 
of Arculf, as he himself declares, commemorates a holy shroud preserved at 
Jerusalem under the portico of the basilica of the Resurrection, and narrates the 
prodigy that happened relative to it before a multitude of Christians and Mo- 
hammedans who awaited the sentence of the Caliph Mauvias. The subject 
under debate was a shroud proper — that is, one of the numerous linens which 
had served to enshroud the head of our di vine Redeemer in the sepulchre, and 
which was consequently a third shorter than those in which the sacred body was 
wrapped ; the circumference did not exceed eight English feet. He relates the 
fact in these terms {De loc. Sant., ch. v.) : 

"A converted Jew took possession of this holy object after the Resurrection 
of our Saviour. From that moment wealth and prosperity flowed to his house. 
He kept it until his death. At his dissolution he asked his two sons which of 
them desired the riches he was about to leave and which would prefer the 
shroud. The elder chose the wealth, the younger the shroud. The riches of the 
Former melted away, and he was soon reduced to poverty; while the faith and 



TJie Holy Shrouds. 



85 



opulence of the other increased. But in the fifth generation the riches alone re- 
mained; the faith was lost. 'A litigation was begun; the Christians of Jewish 
descent claimed to be heirs of the Saviour, the infidel family to be inheritors from 
their fathers. Mauvias, King of the Saracens, who lived in our time, is chosen 
to arbitrate. He submits the case to the judgment of God by fire. A great pile 
is prepared. The king invokes as judge Jesus Christ, who, for the salvation of 
His own, deigned to wear on His head this funeral shroud. At the first crackling 
of the flames, without having received the least injury, the linen rose high in the 
air, and, having fluctuated there for a long time, slowly descended before the 
eyes of all the spectators, and gently placed itself on the bosom of a Christian in 
the crowd. The next morning all the people assembled to kiss and venerate it. 
It was eight feet long." 

Let us remark in passing that of the many holy relics which formerly en- 
riched the Holy Land, and especially Jerusalem, several passed to Constantino- 
ple, where the emperors, the protectors of the Christians, reigned. At a subse- 
quent period another considerable portion was given to Charlemagne, whose 
unbounded influence for a long time counteracted the fanaticism of the caliphs. 
Finally, the Crusaders, in order to enrich their cathedrals and abbeys of the 
West, carried with them on their return almost all that remained in the Holy 
Land and in the East of these sacred treasures, and even at Constantinople. 

Let us now come to the special details concerning the holy shrouds venerated 
in the West. 

The five principal linens (or shrouds proper) are those of Turin, of Besancon, 
of Cadouin, of Cahors, and of Compiegne. 

Turin. — The canons of Lire, in Champaign, about three leagues from Troyes, 
received the relic from Godfroy of Charny, a gentleman of Burgundy, governor 
of Picardy, who had it placed in the church he founded with that intention, June 
20, 1353. He gained it, he was wont to say, in the war against the infidels, and 
received it from Ugon IV., King of Cyprus, at whose invitation he had taken 
arms against the Turks in favor of the king of Armenia. 

From the time it was exposed it drew to Lire great multitudes of the faith- 
ful. But the bishop of Troyes, Henry de Poitiers, thinking that this relic was 
not sufficiently authenticated, forbade the canons to expose it. Thence followed 
a protracted debate which is too long to recount here. Don Langelle says on this 
subject that it matters but little that many should declare against the authenti- 
city of this sacred shroud, since they oppose a great cardinal, St. Charles Borro- 
meo, and other eminent personages, and even the bulls of the pope, miracles, 
and the writings of the authors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 

Afterwards the civil wars obliged the canons of Lire to deposit this shroud, 
with the other precious objects of their church, in the castle of Humbert, 
Count de la Roche, Lord of Villers-Seyssel, who had espoused Marguerite de 
Charny, granddaughter and heiress of their founder. The latter, after the 
death of her husband, restored to them all their deposits except the holy shroud, 
which she retained on the pretext that it was an acquisition made in the war by 
her grandfather, Godfroy, and which belonged to her as heiress. 

Later she presented it to the Duchess of Savoy, Anne of Cyprus-Lusignan. 
The following year the Duke of Savoy had medals struck, on the obverse of 
which was represented the holy shroud held by a womau in a kneeling posture. 
The people now began to pay it public veneration at Chambery. In 1578 it was 



86 



Thirteenth Station. 



transferred from that city to Turin, by command of Emmanuel Philibert, in 
order to spare St. Charles Borromeo a pilgrimage on foot. Notwithstanding the 
promises made to return it to the church of Chambery, it was kept at Turin, 
where it still remains. The dukes had a splendid rotunda built for its reception 
adjoining the cathedral. This chapel of the Holy Shroud became the St. Denis 
of the princes of the house of Savoy, a Christian and saintly family, which his- 
tory only reproaches with having been a little too ambitious, but which is now 
so sadly represented by its last heir. On my return from the Holy Land I visited 
this chapel to venerate the relic it contains. A canon received me with great 
kindness, and gave me some pictures of the holy shroud and an excellent pam- 
phlet relative thereto, from which I have extracted the preceding short sketch. 
The relic is a linen fabric about four inches long, ribbed like dimity, but a little 
tarnished by time. 

BESANgoN. — An inventory of the relics of this city mentioned in 1353 one of 
the holy shrouds, of which there was no record in a preceding inventory of 
1051. It was, then, in this interval — that is, towards the middle of the thir- 
teenth century, in 1253 —according to Rev. Father Langelle, that it was conveyed 
to this city. Dunod, with the best critics, thinks that it came to Besancon after 
the capture of Constantinople in 1204. In fact, many lords from the province of 
Burgundy took part in that expedition, and we know that one of the most 
grateful recompenses for their exploits was to be able to carry some noted relic 
to their own country, where it became a perpetual monument of their valor and 
achievements. 

Othon de la Roche was one of those illustrious warriors ; and the chiefs of the 
Crusade, as an acknowledgment of his bravery, left to him, say the chronicles, one 
of the most precious relics at Constantinople. Othon sent it to his father, who 
gave it in 1206 to Amedee de Tramelay, Archbishop of Besancon. The relic has 
been preserved, but the documents attesting its genuineness were lost in a con- 
flagration caused by lightning in 1349. Authors who had seen and felt it say 
that it was of linen, soft like that of Egypt, supple and woven with designs like 
damask. Its length was eight feet seven inches, its breadth four feet three inches. 

When the revolutionary storm of the last century burst upon France an un- 
worthy priest, branded afterwards with a sobriquet which his doings but too 
justly deserved, hoping to obtain for himself a welcome into an impious govern- 
ment, protested publicly against the holy relic as being a device of superstition 
aud imposture. With many other treasures the relic was brought before the 
Convention, and the Journal de Paris some time after announced that it was 
sent to the hospitals to make lint. 

All that remains at Besancon of the appurtenances of this holy shroud is a 
casket of wood, in which was enclosed one of vermilion containing the holy 
shroud. The casket is of odorous wood, poorly worked in arabesque designs. 
I owe these details to the kindness of the canon-librarian of the cathedral, who 
received me with a truly paternal welcome, put into my hands a collection of old 
pieces and documents which he had compiled, and gave me from among them 
a picture of the holy shroud of Besancon. 

There may be read in the Vie des Saints de la Franche- Comte ) by the professors 
of the College of St. Francis Xavier of Besancon in 1856, a very interesting his- 
tory of the holy shroud of Besancon, its arrival in France, its veneration, and the 
miracles attributed to it. 



The Holy Shrouds. 



87 



Cadouin, — We extract the following passage from the Discourse of the Arch- 
bishop of Bourges at a pilgrimage of Cadouin, in Perigord, before the holy shroud of 
our Lord, on the lUh September, 1873 : 

" We learn from an important document that the holy shroud, at the end of 
the eleventh century, was given to Adhemar, Bishop of Puy, who had followed 
the first Crusade in quality of legate of the Holy See, and who died of the pest 
at Antioch in 1098. Before his death he placed the sacred relic in safe and dis- 
creet hands., and it is thus that it was transported to France, in the West, and 
conveyed to Cadouin. The incidents of this translation are recounted in detail 
in the chronicle of Alberic, monk of the Three Fountains, in the diocese of 
Liege. Upon this we will not insist. Let it suffice to say that it was to receive 
and shelter this sacred deposit that the sons of St. Bernard erected, in the begin- 
ning of the twelfth century, the splendid monumental church in which we 
now find ourselves. 

" During part of this epoch the holy shroud became the object of universal 
veneration in the West. Pilgrims without number came to visit it. Among the 
faithful who in their pious liberality enriched the sanctuary where it reposes 
were bishops, lords, and princes. Signal graces are obtained ; glorious miracles 
augment the devotion of the people; and the Church herself is not silent. Four- 
teen apostolic bulls, emanating from Clement III., Clement VI., Urban V., Gre- 
gory XL, Paul III., Clement VIII., open successively in favor of pilgrims the 
treasure of indulgences, and thus attest by irrefragable monuments the immemo- 
rial and public worship paid to the holy relic. In fine, a vast confraternity, the 
origin of which seems to date back to the year 1140, and which was confirmed 
anew in 1535 by Paul III., extends over the whole of Europe and causes to flow 
towards Cadouin the offerings of Catholic charity. 

" But after the days of prosperity came those of adversity and trial. The 
wars of the fourteenth century obliged the religious of Cadouin to part with 
their precious deposit. It was transported to Toulouse in 1392, where it was 
placed in the church of Tarn, enclosed in a casket of crystal and silver given by 
the city. 

"Numerous miracles indicate the presence of the holy relic. The devotion 
assumed extraordinary proportions ; it became, indeed, so great that when the 
people of Perigord demanded that the holy shroud should be restored to them 
they were met by a refusal. It was necessary to have recourse to a stratagem; 
and yet it was only after more than seventy years of reclamations and attempts, 
after a station of many years at the monastery of Obasine, in the diocese of 
Tulle, after a sentence from King Charles XII., that the religious of Cadouin re- 
entered finally into possession of their cherished treasure. 

"With the return of the holy relic commenced for Cadouin a new era of 
prosperity and glory. Great pilgrimages resumed their courses; kings and peo- 
ple assembled to venerate the precious relic. In the beginning, according to a 
pious tradition now admitted by distinguished savants, St. Louis, before em- 
barking for his second Crusade, came to visit it. Eleonore de Guyenne gave the 
example of a like devotion. After them Philippe de Valois, Charles VI., 
Charles VII., Louis XL, Charles VIII., Anne de Bretagne, Marie d'Anjou, Jeanne 
d'Aragon, and many other illustrious personages sent thither royal offerings or 
came to venerate it in pilgrimages. Pilgrims flocked from all parts. They 
came from Languedoc, Bordelais, Saintonge, Limousin, Auvergne, Bourbonn;u p, 



88 



Thirteenth Station. 



Poitou, and Berry. These were the great, the glorious days of Cadouin. But, 
as if it entered into the designs of God ^hat the veneration of the holy shroud 
should have, at different epochs, its alternations of splendor and eclipse, to the 
era of prosperity very soon succeeded a new period of decadence and oblivion." 

In 1644 Jean de Lingendes, Bishop of Sarlat, made an enquiry as to the 
genuineness of the holy relic, and thus writes of it : " The Rev. P. Dorn Etienne 
Guichard, prior of the place, exhibited to us a great number of bulls, letters- 
patent, registers, titles, and other documents, by which the authenticity of that 
venerable relic of our God and Saviour received so many and so powerful proofs 
that we do not believe there is found in the whole of Christianity a relic better 
evidenced, as there cannot be found one more holy and precious." 

At the time of the great French Revolution two pious Christians saved this 
sacred relic from destruction or profanation. It was at that time despoiled of 
the rich reliquaries in which until then it had been enclosed. 

Cahors. — The cathedral of Cahors possesses a very ancient relic honored 
under the name of the Holy Coif, or shroud of the head of our Lord. It is com- 
posed of three folds of fine Egyptian linen placed one upon the other. The 
learned Egyptologist Champollion, after having carefully examined it, declared 
that this shroud, from its structure, must belong to the epoch of our Lord. The 
folds, exterior and interior, resemble very fine gauze. The holy coif is shaped 
like a serre-tete, which is fastened with buttons under the chin and is made to fit 
a rather large head. It is stained with several drops of blood, two of which in 
particular penetrate through all the folds. According to a tradition, unbroken 
though vague in its origin, this relic was given by Charlemagne or one of his 
family to the church of Cahors, which is one of the oldest in Gaul. Pope Calix- 
tus II. in 1119 came to visit it, and to consecrate the altar of the Holy Shroud 
and the high altar of the cathedral. 

Until th^ Revolution of 1789 there assembled every year an immense concourse 
of pilgrims at Cahors at the feast of Pentecost to venerate the relic. The stormy 
times diminished this veneration. It continues, nevertheless, in the diocese, 
which has a particular office of the holy coif, approved by the Holy See. 

Carcassonne. — In the hospital Du Pont, in the city of Carcassonne, the holy 
cdbouin (coif) of our Lord is the object of popular veneration. 

Compiegnb. — There is preserved in the church of St. Corneille, at Compiegne, 
a white shroud which is called the holy shroud of Jesus Christ, and also many 
bands believed to have the same origin. It appears to have been brought thither 
in 877 by Charles the Bald from Aix-la-Chapelle, which was indebted for it to 
the munificence of Charlemagne. It was at that time enclosed in a church-shaped 
ivory box. Afterwards, in 1092, it was put into a magnificent case adorned with 
the most precious stones, given by Mathilde, wife of William the Conqueror, by 
an act of Foucault de Bonneval, with the seal of Philippe, King of France. When 
the case was opened, on the 15th of August, 1628, the material was found so old 
that it was with difficulty its quality could be distinguished. It appears to have 
been plaited in many folds. The liquids and aromatic ointments with which it 
was saturated rendered it thicker and prevented the discernment of its color. In 
general most of the assistants believe^, that it was a texture of cotton or fine 
linen resembling damask. D. Longelle confirms all these details and applies to 
this noted relic an epigraph taken from Tertullian : "Mea est possessio, olim pos- 
sideo, prius poasideo, habeo origines Armas ab ipsis autoribus quorum fuit res." 



The Holy Nails. 



89 



Since the Revolution there exists not a trace of it. It is said that this pre- 
cious stuff having fallen into the hands of ignorant women, they employed it for 
profane uses until, being reduced to shreds and rags, it ceased to exist. 

THE HOLY NAILS. 

Relative to the holy nails, the first question is of their number. Unfortunately, 
on this, as on many other subjects, authors and artists have assumed great liber- 
ties. Some have supposed four nails, others only three. The profane authors 
who have spoken of the crucifixion always mention four nails. Plautus puts in 
the mouth of one of his personages, in sending a slave to the cross, these words : 
" Affigantur bis pedes, bis manus."' The last excavations, by which some paint- 
ings have been discovered, in the foundations of St. Clement of Rome, show us 
a crucifix with the feet separated. All the Greek paintings represent our Lord 
fastened to the cross with four nails. In this respect we can rely with confidence 
on a people which has so faithfully preserved all that is of material tradition, 
such as leavened bread, the form of baptism, etc. 

A cedar crucifix attributed to St. Luke, the companion of St. Paul, preserved 
at Siroli, near Ancona, presents the feet nailed separately. A second, of the 
time of Pope John VIII. (706), was executed in mosaic in the interior of the 
ancient basilica of St. Peter, and has also four nails. A third, of silver, preserved 
in the treasury of St. Peter's, given by Charlemagne to Leo III. (819) at the time 
of the coronation of the emperor at Rome, bears likewise four nails. The ad- 
versity of the times having obliged Julius III. in 1551 to melt this crucifix, in 
order to employ it for some pious purposes, a cast was taken of it in plaster 
before destroying it, which is preserved in the treasury of the round temple 
of St. Andrew, now called St. Mary of the Fevers. A very ancient gradual of 
St. Gregory on parchment, of the eleventh century, represents the crucifix, in its 
miniatures, with four nails ; and in an ancient mosaic bearing the image of Jesus 
crucified there appear also four nails. There is now preserved at Rome a silver 
crucifix with four nails which was brought from Alexandria, in Egypt (Rocca, 
Eel. de la vraie Croix). 

Gretzer, Justus Lipsius, Ricci; St. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, martyred in 
249; Rnfinus, doctor of the Church in the fourth century; Theodoret, Bishop of 
Cyr, in Syria, who flourished in the beginning of the fifth century; St. Augus- 
tine, about 430 ; Innocent XIV. (1200) ; Cardinal Baronius and Cardinal Tolet, 
in the sixteenth century, all favor this opinion. 

St. Gregory of Tours, in his book on the glory of the martyrs, thus expresses 
himself : ''Two nails are fixed in the hands, two in the feet. But why, one may 
ask, suppose two for the feet, which on the cross of our Lord seem rather to hang 
than to be supported ? But it is evident that in the perpendicular portion of the 
cross there was a hole, and in this hole the foot of a little table was inserted, in 
order that the feet of Jesus Christ might be fastened to it." 

The Abbe Martigny says that Cimabue and Margaritone were the first to take 
the license, in their grand paintings of the Crucifixion which still exist at the 
Holy Cross Church of Florence, to place the feet one over the other and to fasten 
them with a single nail. It was, then, about the thirteenth century that Italy 
adopted this usage; whilst that which prevailed in France and Spain, as in the 



90 



Thirteenth Station. 



oldest paintings, was to separate the feet of the crucified. Rocca says that this 
custom is neither ancient nor reasonable, and that it is merely a whim of artists. 

The first motive for employing two nails to fasten the feet of those crucified 
would be to facilitate the work of the executioners. Could they depend on the 
patience of a victim, who would probably endeavor to withdraw the under foot 
while they pierced the upper one ? and would not the nails, being placed upon 
an object unsteady and offering no resistance, escape the blows of the hammer? 
(Curtius, p. 34). 

" So thought," adds M. Ronault de Fleury, " the doctors I have consulted, and 
who believe, moreover, that in such a system it would have been impossible not 
to break the bones. Now, we know that the bones of our Lord were not to be 
broken. An artist, wishing to paint a crucifix according to the modern Italiau 
custom, tried to fasten the feet of his model one foot over the other; but he told 
me that he was never able to fix them in a convenient position. The legs bowed, 
the weight on the hands became enormous, and the stomach protruded in such a 
manner that it would be necessary to fasten the body with a belt to the perpen- 
dicular portion of the cross" (Inst, de la Pass., p. 167). 

The great number of nails venerated as relics of the Passion of our Saviour 
has given rise to the question if more than four nails were not employed in the 
crucifixion. Some authors have asserted that there were fourteen used, and have 
sought to find them in the different parts and joinings of the cross. But, besides 
being gratuitous and without foundation, these suppositions have against them 
the scarcity of iron at that period. It is a known fact that ancient timber-work 
was not nailed but pegged, as is the cross of the good thief now seen at St. 
Peter's at Rome, and as we see by the text from St. Gregory of Tours quoted 
above relative to the support of the feet of our Lord. 

The nails must have been large to support the weight of the body and to 
make wounds so great that our Lord could say to St. Thomas, "Put in thy finger 
hither." Reason here, as everywhere, accords with the Holy Fathers. 

Discovery of the Holy Nails by St. Helena. — St. Gregory of Tours thus 
expresses himself on the discovery of the nails : " The nails of the cross of our 
Saviour which supported His sacred members were found by the Empress Helena 
after the discovery of the cross itself." * Bosio, as Socrates and Nicephorus Cal- 
listus inform us, says that St. Helena found them in the tomb, according to the 
usage of interring with criminals the instruments of their punishment. We know 
that among the Jews their dead bodies were not permitted to be interred in the 
public sepulchres. 

History of the Nails. — Having gathered together the precious remains of 
the instruments of the Passion, St. Helena employed one nail for the bridle of the 
horse of her son, another for his crown, and cast a third into the Adriatic Sea to 
still the w T aves in a tempest. St. Gregory of Tours has asserted that the fourth 
was fixed at the head of the statue of Constantine: but Theodoret, Sozomen, 
and St. Ambrose, all before his time, believe this last to be that of the crown, 
used for a double purpose. St. Ambrose speaks only of two nails : u De uno 
clavo fraenos fieri precepit, de altero diadema intexuit ; unum ad decorem, alte- 
rum ad devotionem vertit " — of one nail was formed a bit, of the other a diadem ; 

* Socrates says also the nails which fastened the hands of Christ were found at the same time as the 
cross. 



Ufy £$o£tj Bit of (Sarpeutrai. 



The Holy Nails. 



91 



one forornament, the other for devotion. Those two nails, according to Soc- 
rates, must have served to fasten the hands. 

"Probably," says M. Ronault de Fleury, "St. Helena did not put the whole 
nail in the crown nor in the bridle of Constantine ; and instead of casting the 
third into the sea, she may have merely presented it to the water, that its touch 
might calm the tempest. History does not say that she threw it in" (p. 170). 

The above-named learned author has counted as many as thirty-two cities that 
claim the honor of possessing nails of the crucifixion of our Saviour. But it is 
well known that even in the time of St. Gregory the Great a little of the filings 
of relics of that nature, such as the chains of the apostles, united to a consider- 
able bulk of iron forged into fac-similes of the original, were given as precious 
presents to churches or to great personages. St. Helena was the first to set the 
example ; for, besides what we have given above from history, it seems certain 
that Constantine, according to his desire, ordered twelve nails to be made in 
honor of the twelve apostles, containing some particles of an authentic one. More- 
over, there were distributed at a comparatively ancient period, and there are 
still distributed, numerous fac-similes of relics of this kind which have no other 
merit than to have touched the true relic. We have, therefore, no reason to be 
surprised at the great number of nails venerated in various places. The facility 
which the materials of which they are made affords to multiply them by inserting 
into each fac-simile a portion of the true relic has considerably augmented the 
number. Indeed, it may be deemed surprising that there are not many more of 
them. 

The description, or even a brief sketch, of these venerable objects would lead 
us beyond our prescribed limits. We will only add a few brief notes on those 
that are the most worthy of consideration on account of their celebrity and incon- 
testable authenticity. These are, in our opinion, the bit of Constantine at Car- 
pentras, the crown of iron at Monza, and the nail of Treves, completed by that of 
Toul. 

The Bit of Carpentras. — We have just seen that St. Helena ordered a bit 
to be made for the horse of Constantine with one of the nails she had dis- 
covered. Some authors have maintained that she employed two ; but it is more 
probable, on the contrary, that she used only a part of one, completing the bit with 
ordinary iron. After the death of Constantine this noted relic must have been 
placed in the treasury of the emperors with the others. History, which speaks 
of it only two centuries afterwards, does not say that it was used by his heirs; its 
branches, however, are worn by the friction of the rings. In 553, during the 
Fifth General Council, it being the Second of Constantinople, Pepe Yigilius took 
an oath, in which it is thus found indicated : " Blessed Pope Yigilius has sworn to 
the most pious emperor in our presence — that is to say, of us, Theodore of Cicsarea 
in Cappadocia, and of us, Categus, patrician — by the virtue of the holy nails with 
which our Lord was crucified, and by the four holy Gospels, and in particular by 
the virtue of the sacred bridle and of the four holy Gospels, that they will unite 
heart and mind in that pious assembly." 

The nail of Carpentras is a real horse's bit, resembling those which the Ro- 
mans were accustomed to use. Models of them are to be seen at the artillery 
museum of Paris and at the National Library. 

It is an error to attribute to St. Siffrien the honor of having enriched his 
church with a relic so precious, since the holy nail was at Constantinople in the 



92 



Thirteenth Station. 



year 553, at the time of the council, and in 576, when it was employed to cure 
the Emperor Justin. Now, St. Siffrien, bishop in 536, was dead in 576. What 
appears most probable is that it was taken at the time of the Crusaders with 
many other relics. It must have been stolen to be given to Carpentras. This 
origin explains the secret of its appearance in that city, which it was the common 
interest of both the seller and the purchaser not to divulge. 

The first authentic documents of the possession of the holy bit date back to the 
time of the fourth Crusade (1204). We find in the charter of the episcopate a di- 
ploma, dated in the year 1226, at the bottom of which is a seal in lead bearing the 
effigy of the holy nail. It is also on a municipal document of the year 1290. It 
was mentioned in an inventory of relics in 1322 which was discovered during the 
sojourn of the popes at Avignon — that is, from the year 1309 to 1379. Nicholas V., 
in 1491, granted indulgences on its account. The reverses of the times, to which 
Carpentras was more exposed than other cities, account for the absence of docu- 
ments authenticating the relic; but its possession for five centuries is ample 
proof. 

The Iron Crown. — At Monza, near Milan, is preserved the celebrated iron 
crown used at the coronation of the emperors. St. Ambrose, alluding to this 
crown, says that a sacred nail had encircled the head of the emperor whose funeral 
oration he was preaching. Fontanini, who describes it, presents as proof of its 
authenticity the name that was given to it. The crown itself is of pure gold, 
adorned with the most precious stones ; and yet it was called the iron crown, to 
show that, notwithstanding the small quantity employed, this latter metal was 
much more precious than the gold. The crown, which is open on top, is about 
two and a half inches high, and has neither rays, branches, nor ramifications, 
which proves its antiquity. The slight band of iron is fixed in the interior. 

Treves and Totjl. — In the distribution of the precious relics that she had 
brought from the East St. Helena naturally would not forget the church of 
Treves, the imperial city where she had for a long time sojourned, and where is 
still shown the palace in which she resided. It is regarded as certain tha , she 
gave one of the nails to St. Agricius, at that time bishop of Treves, and men- 
tioned in the chronicle of St. Jerome. An anonymous author of the eleventh 
century, in his life of this saint (Bolland., t. ii. pp. 54-59), recounts many miracles 
that took place in connection with this holy relic. The point, which is want- 
ing, was taken oif to be given to the church of Toul, where, enclosed in a crystal 
reliquary, it is the object of great veneration, and attracts annually on the Mon- 
day of Pentecost an immense concourse of pilgrims. 

In 1794 the holy nail of Treves, the sacred robe, and other treasures were 
conveyed to the other side of the Rhine. The Duke of Nassau gave the holy 
nail to Prince Metternich, who, before his death, restored it to Treves. Dom 
Calmet, in the beginning of the last century, gave a correct design of it in his 
Atlas of the Holy Scripture. 

Before finishing this long digression relative to the holy relics connected 
with the Thirteenth Station, the reader may wish to learn what became, on the 
evening of the Passion, of the principal among them, the holy cross of our 
Saviour. In the Talmud we read this text (tr. Sanhedrin): "The stones with 
which a culprit was put to death, the wood from which he was suspended, the 
sword that was used for his execution, as also the shroud and the cord with 
which he was bound, shall be buried near his remains." 



Concordance of the Gospels. 



93 



After the crurifragiuui, therefore, and after Joseph arid Mcodenius had taken 
away the body of Jesus, the crpsses were pulled up from the ground and thrown 
into the Valley of the Dead, a cavern open on the east side by the steep declivity 
of the rock of Calvary. There they were sheltered under the salient projection 
of a rock which is still to be seen in its natural form. In this cavern, in the 
best state of preservation possible under the circumstances, they remained for 
about three hundred years, when they were exhumed, as history informs us, by 
the pious princess, St. Helena. This rock and cavern are found at the south- 
eastern extremity of the grand basilica of the Holy Sepulchre. (See the plan 
we have given of it.) 



FOURTEENTH STATION. 



CONCORDANCE OF THE GOSPELS. 

I. " Now there was in the place where he was crucified, a garden; and in the 
garden a new sepulchre, wherein no man had yet been laid." 

II. "There therefore, because of the parasceve of the Jews, they laid Jesus, 
because the sepulchre was nigh at hand." 

III. "And Joseph, taking the body, wrapped it up in a clean linen cloth, 
and laid it in his own new monument, which he had hewed out * in a rock. 
And he rolled a great stone to the door of the monument." 

IV. "And the women who were come with Him from Galilee, following- 
after, saw the sepulchre, and how His body was laid." 

V. "And returning, they prepared spices and ointments: and on the Sabbath 
day they rested according to the commandment." 

Explanations op the Text. — There was a garden, and in the garden a sepul- 
chre. This sepulchre belonged to Joseph, who had cut it in the rock for him- 

* In monwm-ento . . . quod exciderat in petra— which he had hewed out in a rock. Sur- 
prised to find this passage of St. Matthew (xxvii. 60) translated in Father Lami by these words, 
" which he caused to be cut out," I have consulted all the French translations at my disposal, 
and have invariably found the same false sense, '"which he caused to be cut out," which he 
caused to be hewed out." It will be acknowledged that this translation is peculiarly French. 
It must be observed that from the Renaissance this celebrated nation, which has so eminently 
excelled in letters and the fine arts, having forgotten the respect which their ancestors in the 
middle ages paid to corporations of artisans of all kinds, has been so far influenced by false 
ideas of civilization as to be unable to understand that a man can be noble and learned and at 
the same time employed at manual labor or exercising a simply useful art. Hence the erroneous 
interpretation we have noticed above. It was not so at that time, nor had it ever been so in 
Israel. Without occupying any very distinguished rank in the state, the profession of artisan 
was neither abject nor degrading. We see in the genealogy of the tribe of Juda a family em- 
ployed in the manufacture of fine linen, and another engaged in the art of pottery, whose memory 
is held in honor, and the Scripture has transmitted to posterity the names of Beleseel and Hiram. 
We know that the famous doctor Hiliel, and St. Paul, who was educated in the study Of the law, 
disdained not to apply themselves to the less brilliant mechanical arts. Nay, more, all the 
Israelites were artisans ; for every father of a family, whatever might have been his social po- 
sition, was obliged to have his son taught a trade, unless, says the law, he wish to make a robber 
of him. Joseph of Arimathea was, then, an artisan, as we learn from this passage of the Scrip- 
ture—he was a sculptor. 



94 



Fourteenth Station. 



self. It is quite evident that the garden belonged to him also. This circum- 
stance procured for the faithful, for many years after the Ascension of Christ, the 
liberty of resorting to this holy place, notwithstanding the hatred of the Jews, 
and the privilege of inaugurating by their presence and their veneration that 
perpetual homage which all future generations were there successively to offer. 
Nor can it be erroneous to suppose that they loved to visit often the sacred tomb 
of their divine Master, and that their faith, as well as their gratitude and love for 
Jesus Christ, drew them frequently to this spot. The attempts made in a.d. 136 
by the Emperor Hadrian to efface and desecrate the sacred place and monument 
prove how much they were venerated and resorted to by Christians ; and the 
failure of his efforts shows how persistent were the providential interferences 
that baffled them. God did not permit the tomb of His Son to be destroyed by 
these impious attempts of the idolatrous emperor. It was, according to Euse- 
bius, St. Jerome, and St. Paulinus, to conceal from the Christians the place of His 
holy tomb, and to cause it to be forgotten among them, that he had the grotto 
covered with earth. The idolaters charged with the execution of his orders 
raised over it a kind of terrace, which they paved with stones, and built upon it 
a temple to idols. They set up a statue of Jupiter over the very sepulchre of 
Jesus Christ, on the place of His Resurrection, and one of Venus over the spot 
where He had been crucified (Euseb., Const. Vit., 1. iii. ch. 26 ; Hieron., ep. xiii. ; 
Paulinus, ep. xi.) 

We know what was the joy of Constantine the Great when he learned from 
Helena, his mother, that she had discovered the tomb of Christ, and that this 
great emperor spared neither trouble nor expense to have erected there a sanc- 
tuary the most vast, rich, and magnificent that the world had yet witnessed. A 
description of this wonderful edifice and of its subsequent ruin and rebuilding 
would exceed the limits of this work. The reader who is interested in these 
details can find them fully set forth in Eusebius and in special studies, such as, 
for example, those of M. de Vogue in his admirable work, Churches of tlie Hol/y 
Land. 

We will mention here, however, that in the middle of the fourth century, 
according to St. Cyril, who at that time governed with honor the Church of Jeru- 
salem, the holy place which was -formerly the garden of Joseph had not, in spite 
of the great changes effected there by command of Hadrian and Constantine, 
entirely lost the marks and aspect of its primitive condition, for there w 7 ere still 
seen the marks and remains of the garden in the many almond-trees that had 
escaped destruction, and in the form of its outline. The following is an exact 
translation of the holy patriarch (Catech., xiv. 5) : "Would you," said he to his 
neophytes gathered around him in this place — " would you that the holy Scrip- 
ture itself reveal to you the place of the holy sepulchre of the Saviour? Open 
the Canticle of Canticles (vi. 10): / went clown into the garden of nuts. It is, in 
effect, in a garden, an orchard, that Jesus Christ was buried ; and if at present it 
is difficult to recognize it as such, it is because the imperial munificence has 
changed the disposition of these places. But it was at that time a garden, the 
vestiges of which remain to this day. . . ." 

"And in the garden there was a new sejndchre, wherein no man had yet oeen laid." 
It was not meet that Jesus Christ should after His death possess a tomb — He who 
during life had not whereon to rest His head — but still less becoming had it been 
for Him to be laid in a common sepulchre, preceded and followed by ordinary 



CHAPEL OF HELENA * CAVE OF THE CROSS. 



The Virginal Tomb. 



95 



bodies. The Conqueror of death, says St. Ambrose, ought not to have a tomb — 
"Victor mortis tumulum suum non habet" — but it were still more unworthy 
the Vanquisher of death to be confounded with those over whom death had 
triumphed. It was necessary for the accomplishment of the prophecies that He 
should be three days and three nights in the bosom of the earth, as Jonas had 
been during the same interval in the belly of the sea monster which had swallowed 
him ; but it was necessary, in order to preserve the majesty of Him of whom Jonas 
was but the figure, that this tomb should receive only the Author of life, and that 
it should devour death whilst other graves consume and devour the bodies of 
those interred in them. It was necessary that the sepulchre where Jesus Christ 
was to be born again by His resurrection should resemble the sanctuary in which 
He had been conceived to be born among us ; that the sepulchre should have a 
kind of virginity which should represent that of the Immaculate Mary ; it was 
necessary that Jesus Christ should preserve throughout the quality of only Son, 
as the first fruit among the dead as well as the first-born among many brethren. 
It was not meet that He, who alone among the dead, being the Master of life, 
was free to resume, as He had been free and pleased to lay down, His own life for 
love of us, should mingle with those to whom to die was a necessity, and over 
whom death still held sway. 

According to a passage of the Scripture (Mark xv. 46) the linens also in which 
Jesus was enshrouded were new and had never before been used. This admon- 
ishes us, say the commentators on the Scriptures, of the manner in which he wishes 
to be received into our hearts in the sacrament of the divine Eucharist ; that is 
to say, he wishes to be received only into new hearts entirely changed by grace. 
It is for this reason, also, according to liturgical authors, that the Church 
does not place the body of Jesus on silk or any other costly stuff, but only on 
very pure linen. 

" And he laid it in his own new monument, which he had hewed out in a rocJc." 
u There therefore, oecause of the jparasceve of the Jews, they laid Jesus, oecause the 
sepulclvre was nigh at hand." Joseph had at first only intended to take down the 
body of Jesus from the cross, intending to do for the rest whatever His holy Mo- 
ther and His apostles should judge most convenient. This is evident from the 
manner in which the Scripture speaks of it, and from the reasons which it assigns : 
1st, that the day of preparation was drawing to its close ; and, 2d, that the sepul- 
chre was near. It was not the will of Joseph that decided, it was not his choice 
which determined that of others ; it was the necessity of finishing before the com- 
ing Sabbath, and the nearness of the tomb, that caused the preference; and as it 
is to Providence alone the conjuncture of events is to be attributed, we cannot 
doubt that it was to the beneficent hand of God that Joseph was indebted for 
this happiness and glorious privilege. 

It is thus he is rewarded for his faith and courage. It is for having dared to 
ask the body of the Son of God that he is put in possession of it; it is in his 
monument that the testimony of the Resurrection shall exist to the end of ages; 
the sepulchre which he had destined for himself all nations shall revere. Nico- 
demus, senator like himself, and who aided in the burial of Jesus, shall not, in 
this particular, share his glory ; and Jew r s and Gentiles, successive guardians of 
the tomb given by Joseph to Jesus Christ, shall immortalize the memory of the 
disciple by adoring the place where the feet of the Master once stood. 

The Son of God, in coming into this world, having willed to be the first-fruit 



96 



Fourteenth Station. 



of an eminently pure and virginal womb, wished also that this spotless bosom 
should bear no other fruit. She is the closed gate of which the Scripture speaks ; 
by it the Eternal King alone was to enter. For the very same reason He deter- 
mined that not only should He be received into a new and virginal tomb, but that 
this tomb, after having sheltered His Body — the Life of the world— and restored 
it to the glory of the Resurrection, should never again be occupied, having become 
too sacred ever to be sullied by any mortal remains. So Joseph, who had a better 
right to it than any other, it being his work and his property, and destined for 
himself, relinquished for ever the use of it. Almost beneath the sacred shadow of 
that of the Redeemer he hewed for himself a new tomb, which is still visited by 
pilgrims, at the extreme western limits of the basilica. It is stamped with every 
mark of authenticity, and dates back evidently to the beginning of the Christian 
era. It furnishes of itself alone an unanswerable proof — if, indeed, further 
proofs can be desired — against those who have pretended that the place revered 
as the Holy Sepulchre should have been in the interior of Jerusalem at the time 
of our Saviour. (See in the plan of the Holy Sepulchre the place of the tomb of 
Joseph.) 

Aided by his servants and by Nicodemus — the Syriac employs the plural, 
advolverunt — Joseph rolled a great stone to the door of the monument, and went h is way 
(St. Matt, xxvii. 60), for the Sabbath drew on (St. Luke xxiii. 54). The stone with 
which Joseph closed the door of the sepulchre had undoubtedly been prepared 
for that purpose and cut to fit the entrance from the beginning, since it fitted so 
exactly as to be sealed, as was done soon afterwards by the chief priests. 

It was still to be seen in the same place in the time of St. Cyril : " . . . This 
sepulchre which is here, which is close by." says he to the catechumens; "this 
stone placed at the entrance of the monument, and which to-day we still see in 
the same place. . . ." 

In the time of St. Jerome, in order, no doubt, to facilitate entrance to the 
tomb, this stone was placed in the interior of the grotto of the Holy Sepulchre, 
near the stone bench upon which the body of our Saviour had reposed. This is 
what St. Jerome says of it in speaking of St. Paula : " Having entered the Holy 
Sepulchre, she kissed the stone which the angel had removed from the door of 
the tomb." In fine, the tomb of Jesus Christ was at first a grotto cut into a 
double rock, the first serving as a vestibule to the other, according to the 
ancient usage of the Hebrews (Gen. xxiii. 19; xxv. 9). The first grotto was 
open. It is of the latter that the poet Juvencus speaks {Hist. Evang., l.-iv. v. 729) 
"Limen concludant immensa volumina petrse" (Paschal Rathbert). 

This cavern, serving as an antechamber to the tomb, remained a natural and 
unwrought grotto till the time of Constantine; it w 7 as then levelled, as it inter- 
fered with the plan of the basilica which that monarch erected there, as we learn 
from St. Cyril, who says (Catech., xiv. 9) : "Whence did the Saviour arise? We 
read in the Canticle of Canticles (ii. 10, 14): 'Arise, make haste, my love, my 
dove, my beautiful one, and come. My dove in the clefts of the rock.' He 
designates here the cavern of the rock through which it is necessary to pass in 
order to arrive at the entrance of the tomb, as we still see in other sepulchres. 
At present we cannot recognize this cave which served as a vestibule; it disap- 
peared to give place to the architectural decorations we now admire. For, 
I repeat it, before the piety and munificence of our emperors had constructed all 
that surrounds the Holy Sepulchre, it was necessary, in approaching it, to enter 



Reflections. 



97 



into the rock. But where is this rock which formed a vestibule situated ? Is it 
around the ramparts, ancient or new? It is in the cavern situated near the 
exterior wall. In spelunca petrm jtixta anlemurale" (Ibid. 14; see the Septuagint). 

" The interior or second grotto," writes Paschal Rathbert, " presented the 
form of a circular antechamber cut out under an immense rock, which a man 
standing could hardly reach with his hand. The entrance of the monument 
looks to the east ; it was here the stone was placed and sealed. The body of 
Christ was laid at the north side in a recess, cut into the rock, three palms (or two 
feet) above the ground and seven feet long. The opening of this lateral grotto 
fronted the south." Such is the description of the sepulchre given in the ninth 
century by Paschal Rathbert, a monk of Corbie (lib. ii. in Matth. xxvii. 60). 

The reader may also consult the travels of Paul Lucas in Asia Minor (t. ii. p. 
12 et seq.), who frequently visited this holy place, and gave an exact description 
of it in its actual state. "It is," says he, u a kind of little chamber, almost 
square within, eight feet one inch high from the floor to the vault, six feet one 
inch long, and fifteen feet ten inches wide. The door is closed by a stone of 
the same rock as that of the tomb, and it was to this stone that the chief priests 
applied their seal." 

The stone which closed the tomb of our Saviour, and which the angel rolled 
back aud sat upon, is, I believe, one of the most authentic relics of the Passion 
of our Lord. Besides its mention in the texts of St. Jerome and St. Cyril, as 
given above, we find it spoken of by Bishop Arculf (a.d. 700) in these terms: 

' ' The stone that was laid at the entrance of the monument is now broken in 
two; the lesser portion standing as a square altar before the entrance, while the 
greater forms another square altar in the east part of the same church, covered 
with linen cloths." I have also found it mentioned in the relations of many 
pilgrims of subsequent ages ; but not having taken any notes on this point, these 
details have escaped my memory. It is now in the possession of the schismatic 
Armenians. It is seen and venerated by pilgrims in their church of Mount Sion 
beyond the walls, where it serves as an altar-stone. It was stolen by them from 
the Catholic monks. A fragment of it, however, is preserved in the Chapel of 
the Angel. Imitating the piety of St. Paula, the pilgrims kiss it on entering. 

Reflections. 

Although the tomb of our Saviour has been closed with a huge stone by 
Joseph of Arimathea, and soon after sealed by the Jews, yet the loving heart of 
the Christian will not say with the holy women: Quis rexohet nobis lapidem ab 
ostio monumenti? but will enter in spirit there to unite itself to its dear Redeemer 
dead for love of us. 

How ought not the sinner to humble himself, seeing to what depths the Crea- 
tor Himself has descended for his sake ! What tomb can be deep enough to 
bury our false glory, our vain distinctions, our imaginary advantages, when we 
have seen the King of Glory, in order to heal our pride, willing to be hidden in 
a dark cavern, separated from the commerce of all men, banished from their 
eyes as an object the sight of which they can no longer endure, and exiled 
among the dead, the memory of which no longer exists ? Of what privation 
shall we have reason to complain, or what connection shall we endeavor to re- 



98 



Fourteenth Station. 



tain with the world, if we understand well the total abandonment to which 
Jesus Christ is reduced for us in the tomb ? What sacrifice with regard to our 
goods, our friends, our liberty can cost us an effort if we consider His state of 
solitude, His captivity, His dwelling in a place of darkness, deprived of the use 
of His senses, without animation, having no intercourse save with the Divinity 
of which His flesh could not for a moment be deprived ? 

It is written in Thy Scriptures, O Lord ! that some men, who were carrying a 
corpse to the field to bury it, threw it, for fear of robbers, into the grave of 
Eliseus ; and that this dead body, having touched the bones of the prophet, 
arose and came forth full of life. Does not this exterior miracle authorize me to 
ask of Thee a greater and more spiritual one, and to expect it from Thy bounty ? 
Wilt Thou be less powerful to restore to me the life of my soul by the secret 
virtue of Thy tomb than Thy prophet was to resuscitate a corpse by the simple 
touch of his bones *? Those who cast it into the sepulchre were far from expect- 
ing such a prodigy ; they thought only of ridding themselves of a burden 
which retarded their flight. The dead man knew not upon what they had 
cast him, and was incapable of discerning whether the sepulchre where they left 
him was that of a prophet or of an infidel; nevertheless the divine virtue that 
pervaded the bones of the holy man imparted to them the same virtue as if he 
had been living. It was not necessary that Eliseus should be risen to revivify a 
stranger who touched his remains ; his bones and his dust became the principle 
of life. Can I doubt after this that Thy Body, incorruptible and inseparable 
from the Divinity, can restore my life? It is to its death and burial that my 
resurrection is attached ; it is upon its state of humiliation and infirmity that 
my life depends; from its tomb flows a peculiar grace. It needs not that Thou 
be risen to resuscitate me : all in Thee is life; all is capable of bestowing it ; 
and Thy impassible Body in the tomb can become, by Thy grace, the principle 
of resurrection both for those who invoke Thee as I do and for those even who 
do not, and who resemble the corpse thrown by chance into the sepulchre of 
Eliseus, but within whom the touch of Thy divine flesh can inspire faith and 
repentance. 

The miracle of the Prophet Jonas living in his sepulchre, and coming forth 
after three days and three nights to preach to the Ninivites, was a sad presage to 
the Jews, for whom light and penance seemed to be extinguished, to be revived 
among the Gentiles ; but it was for these last a sign of grace and mercy, since the 
prophet who preached penance to them after his death and resurrection visibly 
prefigured Thee. O my God and Saviour ! Thou in whom the Gentiles believed 
although they had not seen Thy miracles, grant me penance whilst Thou 
causest it to be announced to me by Thy disciples ; inspire me, like the Ninivites, 
with a salutary fear and a still greater confidence in Thy mercy; render the 
mysteries of Thy death and resurrection as present to me as if I had been witness 
of them; and grant that the activity of my faith may supply what I have not 
seen and what I have not heard, for truly it can bring me back to the time of 
Thy mortal life and bind me to Thee as closely as if I had been one of Thy first 
chosen disciples. 

There are two texts in St. Paul which, when well meditated on at the tomb 
of the Saviour, will impart to the Christian soul much light, grace, and fervor. 
To baptism we are indebted for all those inestimable graces which as Christians 
we possess, as well as for all those which w T e expect ; but baptism procures them 



Conclusion. 



99 



for us only because it is the expression of the sepulture of Jesus Christ, and be- 
cause by baptism we are buried with Christ that we may one day rise with Him 
from the tomb. " Know you not," says the apostle to the Romans, " that all we 
who are baptized in Christ Jesus are baptized in His death ?" We have been 
baptized in His death ; and what does that mean, if not to receive the efficacy of 
His death, to express it and to be entirely united to it, as the original text im- 
ports and as the following demonstrates ? — for the apostle continues thus : " For 
we are buried together with Him by baptism unto death : that as Christ is risen 
from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of 
life : for if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, in like 
manner we shall be also of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man is 
crucified with Him, that the body of sin may be destroyed" (vi. 3-6). To the 
Colossians (iii. 3, 4) the same apostle says : " You are dead, and your life is 
hidden with Christ in God. "When Christ shall appear, who is your life, then 
you also shall appear with Him in glory." Hidden, dead, buried with Jesus in 
God, let us expect with faith and confidence the arrival of this moment — a mo- 
ment replete with the glory and happiness of eternity. 



CONCLUSION. 

The reader may be curious to know how two of the greatest writers of our 
age — Chateaubriand and Lamartine — describe the emotions they felt at the sight 
of the Holy Sepulchre. 

"Christian readers," says the former, "will ask, perhaps, what were the 
sentiments I experienced on entering this sacred place. I cannot really say. So 
many thoughts presented themselves at once to my mind that I could not dwell 
on any particular idea ; I remained nearly half an hour on my knees in the little 
chamber of the Holy Sepulchre, my, eyes fixed on the stone without being able 
to withdraw them. One of the two monks who conducted me remained pros- 
trate near me, his forehead on the marble; the other, Gospel in hand, read for 
me, by the dim light of the lamps, the passages relative to the holy tomb. After 
each verse he recited this prayer : ' Lord Jesus Christ, who wast taken down from 
the cross and placed in the arms of Thy most tender Mother, and whose lifeless 
body was laid at the last hour of the day in this holy monument, 1 etc. All that 
I can be certain of is that at the sight of this triumphant sepulchre I felt only 
my own weakness ; and when my guide cried out with St. Paul, ' O grave ! where 
is thy victory *? O death ! where is thy sting? 1 I listened as if death were about 
to respond that it was vanquished, and chained in this monument. 

" We passed through all the Stations to the summit of Calvary. Where find 
in antiquity anything so touching, so marvellous as the last scenes of the Gospel ? 
These are no extravagant adventures of a Divinity estranged from humanity ; it 
is a history the most pathetic, a history the beauty of which draws tears from the 
eyes, and whose consequences applied to the universe have changed the face of 
the earth. I had just visited the monuments of Greece, and was still impressed 
by their grandeur ; but how far were they from inspiring the sentiments I expe- 
rienced at the sight of these holy places ! 



100 



Conclusion. 



"The church of the Holy Sepulchre, composed of many churches, built on 
unlevel ground, lighted up with a multitude of lamps, is singularly mysterious; 
there reigns there a perpetual obscurity favorable to the piety and recollection 
of the soul. Christian priests of different sects inhabit the various parts of the 
edifice ; from the top of the arcades, where they are nestled as doves, from the 
numerous chapels below, and from the subterranean sanctuaries, their canticles 
are heard night and day. The organ of the Latin monk, the cymbal of the Abys- 
sinian priest, the voice of the Greek caloyer, the solitary prayer of the Armenian, 
the plaint-like murmur of the Coptic monk, strike at once or in turns upon the 
ear. You know not whence proceed these concerts; you breathe the odor of 
incense without perceiving the hand that burns it. Now passing for a moment 
before you, now disappearing behind the pillars and losing himself in the shades 
of the temple, you see the pontiff who is about to celebrate the most tremendous 
mysteries in the very places where they were accomplished. 1 ' 

The author of Meditations and of Harmonies, with his profound sensibility and 
prolific imagination, thus unfolds to us the emotions he experienced before the 
Holy Sepulchre : 

" After a moment of profound meditation and silence, given in each of the 
sacred places to the memories it recalled, we redescended into the interior of the 
church, and we penetrated into the inner monument which serves as a curtain or 
an envelope of stone to the tomb itself. It is divided into two small sanctuaries. 
In the first is found the stone whereon the angels were seated when they replied 
to the holy women, He is risen, He is not here ; the second and last sanctuary 
encloses the sepulchre, still covered with a kind of sarcophagus of white marble, 
which surrounds and entirely conceals from the eye the substance of the primi 
tive rock out of which the sepulchre was cut. This chapel is illuminated with 
lamps, and is fragrant with the odor of the perfumes which burn there night and 
day ; the air is cool and balmy. We entered one by one, not permitting any of 
the officiating clergy to accompany us. We were unwilling that the presence of 
any one should trouble the solemnity of the place or the intimacy of the impres- 
sions with which it was capable of inspiring each one, according to his thoughts 
and according to the measure and the nature of his faith in the great event which 
this tomb recalled. Each of us remained there about a quarter of an hour, and 
not one returned with tearless eyes. For the Christian or the philosopher, for 
the moralist or the historian, this tomb is the boundary which separates two 
worlds, the old and the new ; it is the starting-point of an idea which has reno- 
vated the universe, of a civilization which has transformed all, of a word which 
has re-echoed over the globe. This sepulchre is the tomb of the old world and 
the cradle of the new ; no stone here below has been the foundation of so vast an 
edifice, no tomb has been so fruitful. 

"I entered in my turn, the last, into the Holy Sepulchre, my mind besieged 
with these immense ideas, my heart moved with the most intimate impressions 
between man and his soul, between the thinking insect and the Creator. These 
impressions cannot be written; they exhale with the fumes of the holy lamps, 
with the perfume from the censers, with the vague and confused murmur of 
sighs; they fall with the tears which fill the eyes at the remembrance of the first 
names we lisped in infancy, of the father and mother who taught them to us, of 
the brothers, sisters, and friends with whom we murmured them. All the im- 
pressions with which our soul has been affected at every period of our life; all 



Et erit Sepulcmtm Ejus gloriosum. 



101 



the prayers which have issued from our heart and lips in the name of Him who 
has taught us to pray to His Father and ours ; all the joys, all the sorrows of 
mind of which these prayers were the language, awake in the depths of our soul, 
and produce, by their reverberation and confusion, this gleam of intelligence, 
this melting of the heart, which seeks not words, but which takes vent in tear- 
ful eyes, a heaving breast, a brow inclined, and a mouth glued in silence to the 
stone of the sepulchre. I remained a long time thus, praying the Eternal 
Father — there in the very spot where the most beautiful prayers ascended for the 
first time towards heaven — praying for my father here below, for my mother in 
another world, for all those who still live, or who are no more, but between 
whom and me the invisible tie has never been broken ; it was only afterwards I 
prayed for myself. My prayer was strong and ardent." 

The author of this little volume has attempted in vain to describe what he 
himself experienced on this same spot on two occasions : first, when it was grant- 
ed him to offer, on the 19th of March, the feast of his patron, the holy sacrifice 
of the Mass on the very stone whereon the inanimate body of the Saviour had 
reposed; and, second, on Holy Thursday, when, having received the divine 
Eucharist from the hands of the patriarch, he separated from the crowd, and, 
with forehead pressed against the ark of the Resurrection and of eternal life, 
poured forth his heart and tears in fervent thanksgiving. These were, assured- 
ly, the happiest days of his life, and he lives in the hope that the awful passage 
of his death will be sweetened for him by this incomparable remembrance. 

Now, what is to be the future of the Holy Sepulchre in these dark and stormy 
times ? Let us not fear ; the past is the answer of what is to come. 

In 1010, during the caliphate of El-Hakim, a monster of barbarity such 
as is seldom seen upon earth, by his command the Church of the Holy Sepul- 
chre was entirely demolished by the governor of Ramlech, the building being 
not only razed to its foundation, but special efforts being made to deface and 
destroy the Sepulchre itself. Glaber, a contemporary chronicler, relates that the 
destroyers endeavored to break in pieces even the hollow tomb of the Sepulchre 
with iron hammers, but without success ; and Adhemar, another chronicler and 
palmer,* states that when they found it impossible to break in pieces the stone of 
the monument, they tried to destroy it by the help of fire, but that it remained 
firm and solid as adamant. 

In 1808 the entire pile of buildings was again doomed to destruction, the 
sacrilegious hands of the schismatic monks having set fire to it; but phoenix- 
like it rose again from its ashes in 1810. The following account of this confla- 
gration is given by an eye-witness : " I need not enter into the details of that 
fire. It will be sufficient for my purpose to state that the heat was so excessive 
that the marble columns which surrounded the circular building, in the centre 
of which stood the sacred grotto, were completely pulverized. The lamps and 
chandeliers, with the other vessels of the church — brass and silver and gold — 
were melted like wax ; the molten lead from the immense dome which crowned 
the Holy Sepulchre poured down in torrents ; the chapel erected by the Crusa- 
ders on the top of the monolith was entirely consumed ; half the ornamental 
hangings in the antechapel of the Angel were scorched; but the cave itself, 

* Those who made pilgrimages to the holy places were called palmers because of the palms which 
they received at.the Holy Sepulchre on Palm Sunday, and which they carried solemnly and deposited 
on the altar of their church. 



102 



Conclusion. 



though deluged with a shower of lead and buried in a mountain of fire, received 
not the slightest injury interiorly, the silk hangings and the painting of the Re- 
surrection remaining in the midst of the volcanic eruption unscathed by the 
flame, the smell of fire not having passed upon them." 

I leave to minds strong in heresy, incredulity, and chemistry to explain how 
the t hin wall of native limestone enclosing the sepulchre could have escaped the 
destroying agency of a heat that converted the most refractory marble into lime. 
As for me, I prefer to see in this a solemn promise which the Father of Heaven 
has inscribed in His imperishable Scriptures when speaking of the tomb of His 
Son : Et erit sepulcrum Ejus gloriosum. My reason tells me that that which per- 
ishes ceases to be glorious.* 

Who knows if the Lord will not very soon restore to His Church this Holy 
Sepulchre, entire and unprofaned as well as undestroyed ? That day, it seems to 
me, is fast approaching. The abomination of Mohammed, which has usurped 
its keys and its keeping, sees its empire, once so formidable, dying of exhaus- 
tion, of rottenness, and of crimes which cry to heaven for vengeance. The Russian 
Colossus who has there paid and supported the hostility and disunion of all 
schisms now reels and totters on his argillaceous, nerveless, and heterogeneous 
feet. What God will do He will do by Himself, and by Himself alone ; and no 
power on earth shall rob Him of the glory of one tittle of His work. 

* It is exactly in this sense that the Journal des Debats — at that time Journal de V ^Empire— de- 
scribed that disastrous event in its numbers for March 21 and May 11, 1809 : " The chapel of the 
Holy Sepulchre being buried under the burning rubbish, the debris of calcined pillars and the 
mass of molten metals was exposed without protection to the violent action of so terrible a fire. 
There was not one of the inhabitants who did not believe it destroyed. What was their aston- 
ishment when, the fire having ceased., the very door, which was of wood, was found cold and un- 
damaged ! The interior of the monument had not suffered the slightest touch. The altar of 
marble and the painting of the Resurrection were not so much as altered. The flames had 
equally spared the chapel of Calvary, of the Crucifixion, and of the Mother of Dolors, officiated 
in by the Catholics. The Turks themselves consider these circumstances as miraculous. Un- 
doubtedly it was only a supernatural power that could preserve the Holy Sepulchre in the midst 
of the flames which surrounded it on all sides. The three holes pierced in the vault gave free 
access to the sparks and flames ; for several hours the melted lead poured without intermission 
on the wooden door and a stream of metals in fusion flowed unceasingly upon it ; but this tor- 
rent, as if seized by a hand of ice, became congealed upon touching it. The door remained cold 
and the chapel intact in the midst of the burning whirlpool." 



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